BACK TO REALITY - CHAPTER 15
Tommy Arashikage's mind felt uneasy.
He sat in the Lotus position, the traditional sit of mediation, with his eyes closed. But sporadic images continuously haunted his thoughts, images of a suspicious nature that had him thinking that he belonged somewhere else. He couldn't explain the feeling. But something nagged fiercely in the back of his mind, and he seriously wondered if he was supposed to be here. That's crazy, he thought. Of course, I am. This is my life.
He opened one eye and looked at his friend sitting next to him mediating. Snake Eyes, a nick name everyone called him because of his poker habits and the fact that he always lost, seemed to be having a better time at dwelling in mediation that Tommy was. Snake Eyes' looked peaceful.
Tommy, on the other hand, felt anxious. His heart began to beat feverishly, as if he had a darkly sixth sense of foreboding. He didn't know why he had this feeling, but it also felt natural in a way, as if his senses were attune of its acceptance - like an animal in the wild that was completely aware of its surroundings at all times.
Snake Eyes opened his eyes quickly and jumped to his feet. "Get up, something's coming!" he said, a stern look in his eyes as he looked at the door that lead into the mediation parlor. Tommy didn't know his friend had brought his DVB device with him.
Tommy got to his feet. "What's coming?" He eyed the door, and suddenly the door exploded inward. Tommy blocked his face from flying debris.
But it was merely a distraction as a hand burst through the floor and ripped the area around it apart, creating a hold large enough for whatever it was to come through. Johnny-5 emerged from the hole and crawled up through the wood floor. Tommy and Snake Eyes stepped back as it stood to its full 6'5" height.
The robotic guard at Extensive Enterprises had malfunctioned and was destroyed when Snake Eyes incapacitated it by knocking its head off. This version looked modified, and zombified, half of its metallic casing melted away.
It attacked, but Snake Eyes took hold of it and threw it crashing through the nearest wall. Not easily dissuaded by Snake Eyes heroics, it returned with equal forthright and attacked again.
It swiped through the air at Snake Eyes with a metal arm but missed as Snake Eyes moved away from its reach. He then swept its legs from underneath it and it came crashing down to the floor on its back.
"What the hell is going on here?" Tommy said.
Snake Eyes shook his head. "That's what I'd like to know. Dr. Mindbender has some explaining to do…or perhaps someone else is marinating the strings to this mechanical puppet."
Another robot emerged from the hole Johnny-5 came through, and it looked exactly like Johnny 5. "Dr. Mindbender only said there was the proto-type," Tommy said, as he jumped back from its reach, as it attempted to grab his leg.
Before the robot fully emerged from the hole, Tommy gave the robot's head a swift kick, and cocked it backwards. The robot fell back into the hole only to be replaced by a third and afterwards a fourth.
Snake Eyes came to Tommy's side. "These things are slow and the A.I. is responding like a human brain. Someone is controlling them. I took care of the first one. I ripped out its CPU from its chest plate."
"Dad!" came a voice from the doorway, Billy stood in the midst of the rubble. He gasped as he saw what was happening. "What's going on? It that Johnny-5?"
"Billy, go! Get Snake Eyes' family out of the house and call the police!" Tommy told him.
But Billy instead joined his father in the dojo. A third robot emerged from the hole and fixed its gaze on Billy. Its red slit sensor eye flashed as if scanning the room for more potential threats and lunged for Billy when it detected none.
Billy ducked and rolled across the floor past the robot as it came at him, jumping back to his feet next to his father. The three robots joined together in a fortified front. And the middle one's right arm quickly morphed into a plasma cannon.
Tommy grabbed Billy and smothered him on the floor as the robot fired. Snake Eyes hitting the hit seconds before the blast destroyed the wall behind him. The wall gave way and the entire room began to crumble down around them.
Tommy darted a look at the hole. "Billy, down the hole. I want you to get away from here!"
"But Dad, you'll be killed! I want to help!" Billy retorted.
"Don't argue with me. Your uncle and I can handle this. We've dealt with Johnny-5 before."
"Why is there more than one? I thought he was off-line? Uncle decapitated it back at your office when it malfunctioned and attacked you."
"I don't know. But I want you to go. Now!"
Another plasma blast came at them, and Tommy pushed Billy out of the way, and rolled the opposite way as the blast destroyed the floor where they once lain. Debris exploded, showering down around them.
Tommy covered his head, then turned back to his son. "Billy!"
"I'm okay Dad," Billy replied. Snake Eyes had used his body as a shield, smothering Billy as debris showered down. But that last blast caused the DVB device in Snake Eyes ear to fall out. And it had been destroyed.
"Snake Eyes, you okay?"
Snake Eyes gave Tommy a thumbs up. Tommy knew his friend would never be able to speak again. Tommy had forgotten how he created the unique device that allowed that miracle to happen after the car accident.
But perhaps that was the problem that he had suspiciously contemplated while he tried to mediate. If he indeed created such a device, how could he so easily forget how it worked and how he built it? Unless he didn't; it never felt right. It almost seemed he was playing the part of the CEO of a multi-billion corporation and a scientist.
He held his head as a painful migrate hit. A flood of images flashed through his mind - images, people, places and events from the artificial reality game he and Snake Eyes had created.
It's all a lie…
Cobra Commander pulled Slice's chair out from underneath him and the martial artist fell to the floor with a heavy thud. He protested, but when he saw his leader standing over him, his eyes behind his mesh mask opened wide with fear. Cobra Commander's eyes glared at him behind the glass plating of his helmet.
"Commander, I can explain…"
Cobra Commander gripped the shoulders of Slice's blood red uniform and hauled him to eye level, and to the commander, that was a few inches above the ground for the martial artist. "You idiot! Do you realize what you've done? You changed the parameters of the artificial environment."
Cobra Commander threw Slice aside and leaned over the computer console. He brought up the matrix of the program he designed for the A.I. environment and saw error message after message within the once close-knit lines of code in a separate box to the right of side of the screen. Slice's changes had corrupted his perfect SIM.
"I'm sorry, Cobra Commander, I can fix it," Slice tried to explain.
Cobra Commander turned sharply to the martial artist. "You're do nothing. Get him out of my sight! I have to fix this."
Firefly grabbed the martial artist by his shirt and dragged him to the wall where he chained Slice's wrists with shackles, next to an unconscious Kamakura. "Please, don't do this. I can help!" Slice pleaded.
"You've done enough already," Firefly warned him. "If I were you, I'd be saying your prayers."
Firefly returned to Cobra Commander's side as the commander was typing feverishly, attempting to erase what Slice had done, siphoning the bad code from the matrix of the A.I. environment. But when Cobra Commander slammed his fits on the keyboard, it was obvious his attempts were futile. "Damn that fool! He's ruined everything!"
"Cobra Commander!" Tommy Arashikage - Storm Shadow - said on screen. He was looking directly at him, as if he knew where the focus of the camera was inside the A.I. environment. "You can't fool us any longer! We know!"
And Cobra Commander growled in anger.
To be continued.