"The Redeemer"

Beep! Beep! Beep! The steady pulse of F-pitched noise came from Harold’s pocket. He knew it originated from his PDA, to alert him of the fact that he had been scheduled for yet another meeting at his destination. He did not bother to check the message; the hospital had paid to send him to that particular planet on a luxury cruise ship, and he was not going to waste a free chance to relax and calm down before he had to do anything even related to work. Not being one of the plentiful doctors he worked with, there was no way he could have afforded this trip by normal means. His secretary wages were slim to none as it was. To pay attention to work at this point would only add undue stress to what he considered his only chance at a vacation for a long time.

At the moment, Harold happened to be seated at one of the cheaper bars on board. Slowly sipping his martini, he watched as an alien sport he had never encountered before played itself out on a primitive thirteen-inch plasma screen. He knew a few words of the language they were using, but with his limited experience, he could really only make out the words “ball” and “goal,” and even those were just assumptions. He could tell from the colors worn that there were either three different teams competing, or three different types of positions for those playing to take. Just from watching, one would have suspected it to be a game of three-way Ultimate, where a ball had replaced the traditional disk. It was not particularly entertaining, but it was the only thing Harold had to entertain himself at the moment, so it was what he was intent on watching.

Looking around, Harold suddenly had the strangest feeling of deja-vu; he most certainly remembered being in that same bar. This was impossible, of course, as this was truly the first cruise he had ever taken in his life, so the idea of it confused him somewhat. He felt a shudder run down his spine.

“Youse aiight dere, pal?” Harold had not thought the shudder was enough to be visible, but if the bartender had caught it, it must have been quite obvious.

“Yeah, I’m fine; you ever get the feeling you’ve been in the same sort of situation before?”

“All th’ time. Yous’ve obviously ne’er werked ‘ere!”

Harold could not really sympathize with the barkeep, but he could at least see the point he was making. He went back to silently sipping his martini. Even so, he still could not shake the strange feeling of dread that accompanied the deja-vu. Something bad was going to happen, he just knew it. Perhaps, he thought, he had only drunk one too many, the result of which was an unnecessary paranoia. Deciding that was most definitely the case, he began the long walk to his room to sleep it off. On the way, he passed two things that caught his attention.

First, as he exited the bar, he noticed that the upper deck was roped off. There were not any passenger cabins up there, so it was not as though they were denying anyone the way into their rooms. A sign posted near the rope read “Pardon the inconvenience! We are currently preparing for this evening’s banquet to take place on the upper deck. Look forward to it!” Besides this, the only object present to suggest there actually was something going on up there was a black velvet curtain hiding everything above the landing of the staircase. Harold was not entirely certain he would be able to wake up in time to make it to the event; even so, he held a slight anticipation.

The second thing he noticed and took note of was a dialogue between a crewman and what Harold supposed was the captain. The crewman was down a tributary hallway, and Harold had no intent to try and get any closer to the man, but he did hear him state “Yes sir, the burners are on as you ordered,” before he continued to walk down the hall to his room. It was none of his concern how loyal the crew were to their captain at this moment.

He got to his room about five minutes later, genuinely exhausted from the mixture of too much alcohol and the trek to get there. Just because he was put on a cruise ship did not mean the hospital would pay for a luxury suite for him; he ended up with a middle-class passenger cabin, on the interior of the ship. Sure, it was cheaper than a space-side room, but there were no views outside from it, save the door window, and even that only faced more ship interior. As one would expect, the room was fairly plain, only slightly larger than an average college dormitory room, with one plain twin-sized bed and a small area sectioned off for the bathroom. The plainness of it only made Harold more drowsy, and thinking nothing of it, he collapsed onto the bed. In five minutes, he was out.

Harold had no idea what time it was when he was wrenched from his sleep by a really loud noise. At first, he was so out of it that he could not discern what the noise was, but as he came to his senses, he realized it was an alarm. He had not brought an alarm clock; this sound originated from several points along the hall outside his room. Wondering what was going on, Harold waited for any sign of the crew running down the corridor. No one was to be seen except the occasional panicked passenger. Great, thought Harold, we’ve probably been hit by an asteroid or something.

As if to answer his burning question, the captain’s voice came on over the intercom. “Please remain calm. The ship has run against an asteroid and is leaking oxygen at a non-preventable rate. We need all the passengers to calmly make their way up to the upper deck and into the emergency escape vehicles by order of deck, so as not to cause congestion. The mezzanine deck will be first.”

Harold could not believe what was happening. How was he going to explain the situation when he got back, if he got back? Surely they’d understand, he thought to himself, none of this was my fault. He left his room and waited in the hall; he was on the upper passenger deck, which was just below the mezzanine. Logically, it would be called next.

Harold’s prediction came true, about ten minutes later; the captain’s voice could be heard once again, stating, “If you are a passenger on the mezzanine deck and have not evacuated, please do so immediately. At this time, I would like all passengers on the upper passenger deck to make their way to the upper deck to evacuate.”

Harold wasted no time getting to the stairs he had just taken – well, not just taken; he still was not sure of how long he was asleep – to get to the mezzanine deck. By this time, it was fairly empty, except for a few people behind him racing to the same stairway he had passed before; the rope had been removed, obviously, but the curtain was still there. This confused Harold a bit, but he figured perhaps it had been fastened to the point, and pulling it down would cause more damage that the crew would not want to clean up. He soon joined the masses in rushing up the carpeted staircase, up to the landing.

Except the landing was not where it should have been. As he rushed his way to the last step, he was barely able to catch himself on the handrail. The two people running adjacent to him were not as lucky; he watched them trip into a pit, to be consumed by flames at the bottom.

Harold was more than slightly befuddled by this. In order to clear his head and keep from getting pushed into the pit himself by the oncoming masses, he jumped over the banister and into the corner at the base of the stairs, not ten feet below. Was there not just an oxygen leak? He was not woken by any strong movements to suggest a collision, so it could not have been so bad as to cause this big a fire, especially right below the main stairs. From what he could remember of the brochure, the furnace was nowhere near the passenger portion of the ship anyway, because such an event could occur. What was going on?

“If you are a passenger on the upper passenger deck and have not evacuated, please do so immediately. At this time, I would like all passengers on the middle passenger deck to make their way to the upper deck to evacuate.”

Harold watched a flood of people rush up from both sides of the ship, all running towards the same doom he had narrowly avoided. This time, however, he noticed a major difference: while the people running with him had slipped at the top and fallen in unintentionally, these people seemed to expect the fire to be there, and leapt into it almost willingly. He then saw the reason why, following the people up from the same deck.

“Yes, let the eternal flames of salvation welcome you with open arms!” A man speaking very much like a televangelist came running up the steps, waving his arms fanatically. “The gate to God’s kingdom is before you!”

This man had apparently created a cult following in the short amount of time since take-off. The biggest questions in Harold’s mind were also the most perplexing: how had this man known of the pit of flames, and why was he leading the other passengers into it?

Then, another interesting thought came to his mind: was this man truly a passenger? This new, wild idea was spurned by something he had overheard in the hallway to his room:

“Yes sir, the burners are on as you ordered.”

Surely, as a true man of the ship, if the crewman had been referring to some sort of thrust aid, he would have called it by its proper name, such as “furnace,” or “thruster,” or something of the like. He would not have referred to it simply as “burner.” He had been referring to the flames that were now consuming the, occasionally willing, bodies of the passengers. This was the first time he also really noticed, as he looked around the large atrium, that not a single crewman was to be seen. If the case was as he figured, then this preacher was in on it. Unfortunately for Harold, however, the man had conveniently placed himself on the other side of the flowing mob, making it impossible for Harold to get to him. As it was, he was truly trapped, until he turned around to face the area below the steps themselves.

There, somewhat hidden in the shadows created by the fire, was a small door, on which a sign read “Authorized Personnel Only.” Not only had he found his means of escape, he had also inadvertently found the way to seek the answers he desired. Not wasting another moment, he thrust open the door.

He sat up in the chair with quite a shock. Part of this came from having somehow been placed in this reclined chair without his knowing, and part of it came from the large black tube shoved down his throat. Entirely in a state of confusion, Harold reached up and grabbed the protrusion sticking out from his face, and pulled with what strength he could muster. The tube came out, warranting a large gag reflex from him. To his surprise, all that arose from the pit of his stomach was a bit of bile, mixed with what appeared to be curdled milk. All in all, it would not have filled a shot glass.

It was at this point that the other objects driven into him came into vision. Most notable was a large metal device on his head, with several hundred thin needles jabbing through his skull. He fiddled with this for some time before locating a switch that caused all the points to recede. As he did so, he took the time to gaze at his new surroundings.

The room was easily four acres in floor space, and completely crowded with chairs identical to the one in which he currently sat. In each one lay a body, and above each head was a small holographic console, displaying various vital signs. From his own limited experience, Harold could see several that had expired, and most appeared to be from some sort of a shock. What exactly was this place?

Harold then started trying to figure out how exactly he had come to be here. He had just been on a ship, had he not? Something about a huge fire, and a religious fanatic... Ah, yes! There had been a door! What did the door read again? Something like “Authorized Personnel Only,” if I remember correctly... He remembered throwing the door open, but that was it. Anything that possibly transpired after that, if there was anything, was a complete blank. This was about when he was finally able to struggle the helmet off. He decided to take a walk, to see exactly where he was.

The ship he had been on was big, but there was no possible way it could have held a room this size. They had been selling blueprints of the ship in a small gift shop on the mezzanine, and Harold certainly had not seen anything that could possibly account for these huge quarters when he had taken a glance at it. As he continued to walk down this aisle, he spotted a dimly-lit door recessed in the whitewashed walls, near the corner of the room, and made his way towards it.

While taking this newly-plotted course, Harold was given a better chance to see the people in the same situation he had been in just moments ago. Most of them were anonymous profiles to him, but one near the end of the row he was in caught his eye, and after a closer look, gave him quite a stir. He had seen that same face not five minutes ago, frozen in terror as the body it was attached to hurdled down into a pit of flames. This was the man who had been running next to Harold all the way up the stairs, and who was unable to grab the handrail in time as Harold had. The monitor above him read the same as many in the room, and many more were joining it in unanimity: desceased, by shock. A line from an older documentary film they had shown in the hospital he worked at – he was bored at the time and decided to pop in during the last fifteen minutes or so – crept from his memory, and escaped his lips in a whisper.

“The body cannot live without the mind.”

The whole truth was obvious to him now. These chairs were true-to-life simulators, and the room he was in was some sort of modern euthanasia chamber. These people were to be killed, and many of them obviously had not yet reached age thirty. It sickened Harold to the pit of his soul, to see these lives cast aside so easily. He had to put a stop to it, no matter what it would take. If he died in his attempt to bring an end to this action, then he would have at least done something. The only idea on his mind now was what was directly in front of him: the door out of the room. It was the only door he could see – and why would there be more than one door into such a room anyway? – so he hurriedly made his way through it.

He was now in another white room, but this one was much smaller. Along the wall opposite the door were large, ancient screens, and on each was a different view of the inside of the “ship.” There was a group of people in white labcoats huddled around one screen in particular; Harold could see that this screen displayed the main atrium on the mezzanine level, and focused on the large pit in the stairs. He could hear one on the men say something along the lines of “Just like lemmings...” On a counter near the door, there was a screwdriver. Its handle had a crude label attached to it, making claim that this tool was to be used to fix the screens. Oh, it’ll fix something, all right, thought Harold, as he flipped it around in his hand. The flat head now faced out, away from his body; he quietly made his advance on the cluster. He was not quiet enough, however, for as he was preparing to take out the first person, he turned around and let out a yelp. Harold, who needed no more attention than was necessary, thrust the head of the screwdriver into the man’s solar plexus. He dropped to the floor like a stone, eyes glazed over.

This, obviously, attracted the attention of the other men surrounding the monitors. There were five left. The first made to punch Harold in the same place he had just attacked his previous victim; Harold blocked with his free hand and brought the blunt end of the screwdriver down as hard as he could on the top of his assailant’s head. The heap on the floor doubled in size. The second and third men got on either side of him and charged inward, arms arched to either side and ahead of them. Harold leapt forward into a rolling somersault, stopped on his feet, and turned a full 180 degrees, still kneeling. The one on his current left made to punch him in the face; Harold grabbed the fist in his left hand. The other made the same move a second later on the right; Harold caught this blow with his right, empty, hand. Using the leverage the men were then creating in an attempt to get out of the grasp, Harold jumped up from the ground in a split-kick, nailing both men square in the groin. Once down, it was only too easy to kill them both with the tool.

The last two started to make a move towards Harold, but were visibly frightened at this point. Harold, taking full advantage of the stall for time, reached down into one of the cadaver’s front breast pocket; he had seen the glint of metal emanate from it before, and now wanted to use something that would be easier to kill with than an ordinary flathead screwdriver. Sure enough, when he pulled his hand back with the perceived object, he found it to be a scalpel. This luck brought a flicker of relief to his eyes, and a smile of vengeance to his lips. He stood back up as the first to attempt to take him out was going down for him. Harold jumped, planted his right foot firmly on the man’s right shoulder, and used his remaining momentum to bring his left foot around into a collision directly above the other’s mandible, in the temple. He, as the others had done, fell to the floor. Harold’s remaining kinetic energy allowed him to spin around and land facing the last man standing in a crouched pose, his left leg extended to the side. The scalpel was brought up swiftly into the remainder’s armpit. Just as an added measure, however, Harold took his left hand and smacked him upwards in the nose with his palm.

Harold surveyed the new scene that befell his eyes: the men responsible for the deaths of all those people, whether intended or otherwise, now lay stiff at his feet. His aim had been achieved.

“End program.” A hand reached out and flipped the rather large switch next to the 25-inch monitor. The lights came back up, and the simulation chair Harold was in powered down.

“So, now you’ve seen what the execution of murderers consists of. Any questions?” The man’s badge read “Cliff.” His shoulder was the most decorated in the room.

“Yeah, there were several things I was wondering about.” The man’s name badge read “Robert.” The machine that made it was still warm from doing so. “First, how exactly does all this work?”

“Ah, that’s not too difficult to figure out,” spoke a third man. His badge read “Bernard.” “You see, Harold even knew the basic principle within the simulation. As he himself whispered, ‘The body cannot live without the mind.’ If the people being executed are killed in a true-to-life simulation such as this, there is very little chance they’d come out alive. If such a case arose, the person would be very much like Harold over there -- comatose for life.” The corpulent man allowed himself a laugh, revealing the coffee stains on his teeth and shaking the glazed crumbs loose from his stubble.

“That actually leads to another question of mine: how exactly does a comatose man do all this? Wouldn’t his mind be as dead as those he kills?”

“I’ll field this one,” interjected a woman in her early thirties. The name badge on her chest read “Jennifer.” The guys seemed to appreciate her name. If she did notice, she showed no sign of it. “His body is comatose, yes, but it is entirely a nerve dysfunction. His brain and mind function normally. It’s a rare case, which is why he’s here doing this. He’s that much stronger than anyone else in these simulations because his mind, so used to not being able to move his body at all, exaggerates his muscular capabilities, thus allowing him to easily kill everyone we need to die in the simulation.”

“Okay, that all makes sense,” reasoned Robert. “Just one more question. How long has Harold been doing this?”

Cliff responded this time. “You know, he was here when I first joined the force, over twenty-two years ago. I honestly have no idea how long he’s been doing this. What I do know is that it’s the same simulation every time. Oh yeah, Jen,” he turned towards the younger blonde, “Could you prepare Harold for next time?”

“No problem, chief.” She walked over to the reclined chair Harold was sitting in, pressed a red button beside the armrest, and erased his memory of the past half-hour. She then made sure to refill the tank that held the murky fluid keeping his body alive for the past decades. He would be perfectly ready to go at it again tomorrow.

“Well, now that we’re done here,” said Robert, “What’s next on our agenda?”

Cliff reached over and grabbed a clipboard stuffed with important-looking papers off the console and flipped through it until he found the page he was looking for. “Mm-hmm... mm-hmm... Did that, did that, and we just finished that, so I guess that means... Yep, next is the sterilization of potential child-abusers. You up for it, Barn?”