Hellmet

Is anybody there?

Ah, shit, I might as well assume you're there, and that you can hear me, even if I'm not sure I'm saying any of this out loud. You probably want an explanation about why I broke the terms of our arrangement.

A little before midnight, I penetrated the so-called state-of-the-art biometric security systems at Psychtronics using the firmware back door codes your people supplied. The vault responded nicely to the hack that spoofed the time lock, and I was able to grab the whatsis — the Virtual Therapy Helmet — right on schedule. But on my way out of the place, I ran into some workaholic geek and I had to ice him. Stuffed the body down the disposal chute — made quite a racket going down, but there was nobody but me to hear it. And a geek like that won't be missed until Monday anyway…

So I had a couple hours to kill in this half-credit hotel room. I tried the TV — nothing good on the few free channels, and I'd paid cash, so charging some pay-per-view porn was not an easy option. Nothing to read except the good old Gideon Bible, and the Tourist Board guide to what passes for attractions here in downtown Podunk.

I had nothing to do but stare at the butt-ugly walls. I mean, look at those walls. I don't know where they got that wallpaper, but I hope they got a good price, because that beige-with-faint-green-splotches looks like somebody upchucked a gutful of cream of broccoli soup. Come to think of it, the room even smells like somebody vomited in here a while ago…

I wasn't supposed to screw around with the helmet, I know. Your guy told me it was "delicate", "a prototype", "too complicated for anybody but an expert to handle". But I was bored, you know. Really bored. And I figured, what could it hurt?

So I unpacked the thing, and took another look at it. Not too impressive — a flexible skeleton of pearlescent gray plastic, like some designer's idea of combination earphones and eyephones, with a couple dozen coppery contacts over the inner surface; a slot in the back for interface cables or maybe memory cards; and a single button.

I put it on. It molded itself to my skull as if it had been made just for me, the pressure so evenly distributed that I hardly felt it at all. The metal contacts felt cool against the skin of my forehead and neck.

I pressed the button.

And I screamed.

I've tried virtual reality hardware before. This was different. It wasn't just sight and sound, it was everything. One second I was lying on the lumpy hotel bed in my working clothes, feeling a little sticky from the day's exertions, that faint vomit smell snaking its way through my nostrils, the next I was standing stark naked on a rough stone ledge, the stone so hot that I could feel blisters forming on the soles of my feet, smell the hairs on my legs crisping and burning to ash, hear the cries of a billion damned souls, and see an endless plain where other naked forms writhed in agony.

I tried to move, to shift my feet, to tear the damned helmet off my head, but I was paralyzed, unable to move except to squirm like a stripper in a phone booth. My feet seemed to be welded to the stone like cheap steaks seared to a rusty grill.

Just my luck — the program loaded into the helmet when I snatched it was some sicko programmer's idea of a simulated Hell.

It has to be a simulation, right? Unless the helmet killed me, and this is where I'm gonna spend eternity.

Just kidding. At least I hope I'm kidding.

After a while, the heat stopped hurting me so much. I guess all the nerve endings would be dead after a while if you really got roasted like that, or the brain would stop accepting the input.

Then it started to get cold.

Still paralyzed, but my eyes were frozen open. I could feel my skin freezing layer by layer, cracking and splitting as the moisture turned into clusters of needle-sharp ice crystals.

I took comfort in the knowledge that you would be arriving at any moment. You would get into the room somehow, deactivate the helmet, and take it off me. You'd be pissed at me for trying it on, maybe knock a little — or a lot, at this point I didn't care — off my "finder's fee". Hell, maybe you'd kill me.

Anyway, one way or another, I figured that this torture had to end soon. I decided that I would find the programming team who had built this simulation and I'd pay them back in kind — except their burns and wounds wouldn't vanish at the press of a button.

It started to get hot again. Thawing flesh hurt more than freezing flesh. And my sensitivity to heat was miraculously restored.

Which brings us up to the present moment. I don't know how long I've been in virtual Hell. Maybe only a few seconds, although it feels like hours or days…

I had almost two full hours to wait before the buyer was due to arrive when I put the helmet on. But two hours of real-world time could be a lot longer in virtuality.

I can hold on. This Revelations by way of Hieronymous Bosch crap is not going to break me. I mean, I've already been through the worst of it, the heat and the cold, and I can take it again, ten times, a hundred times, however much virtual time two real-world hours turns out to be.

I can take — oh, Jesus, Jesus, there's something crawling up my legs. Something is EATING MEEEEEEEE

Find more by Robert Moriyama in the Author Index.

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