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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Maze: The Waking of Grey Grimm

  INTERVIEW WITH GREY GRIMM

  1 | Sunny

  2 | Sunny

  3 | Sunny

  4 | Hunter

  5 | Hunter

  6 | Hunter

  7 | Grey

  8 | Grey

  9 | Grey

  10

  11 | Sunny

  12 | Sunny

  13 | Sunny

  14 | Sunny

  15 | Hunter

  16 | Hunter

  17 | Hunter

  18 | Grey

  19 | Grey

  20 | Grey

  21 | Grey

  22

  23 | Sunny

  24 | Sunny

  25 | Sunny

  26 | Hunter

  27 | Hunter

  28 | Hunter

  29 | Grey

  30 | Grey

  31 | Grey

  32

  33 | Sunny

  34 | Sunny

  35 | Hunter

  36 | Hunter

  37 | Hunter

  38 | Hunter

  INTERVIEW WITH GREY GRIMM

  39 | Grey

  40 | Henk

  TONY BERTAUSKI

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  The Waking of Grey Grimm

  Awareness leaping is all the rage.

  GREY ISN’T SLEEPING.

  Sunny Grimm finds a strap around his head with an embossed symbol between his eyes. This is the mark of awareness leaping, where players launch into alternate realities and anything goes. Investors make millions. Critics, however, refuse to call it a game. They argue that reality confusion will end humanity. Labels aside, there are many who play and many who lose.

  The consequences are steep.

  Sunny goes on a mad search for her son and the people responsible for allowing him to play. The only way she will find him is to not lose herself in the search.

  The Maze is more than a game.

  INTERVIEW WITH GREY GRIMM

  “He wants to talk to you,” Andrew says.

  Freddy drops his pen. The feed on his monitor shows a kid in a hard-backed chair. He’s got shaggy hair and a smooth chin. Freddy would’ve guessed the kid is fifteen years old, but he knows he’s eighteen.

  “Why’s he here?”

  Andrew taps his forehead. “He was in it.”

  Freddy sighs. Ten-year-olds, grandmothers, or paraplegics, it doesn’t matter who you are. Mention the Maze and you get a free conversation with authorities.

  Especially this kid.

  His mom was fished from a submersion tank six months ago. The stink of the thick bubbling goo was as bad as a summer corpse—like oil scraped from the skull of a beached whale. Kid’s mom was just another donation to the Maze, a puckered human shell in a giant egg jar.

  She was in the high-rent district, an abandoned warehouse with amenities. It was the biggest bust in quite some time. No telling how long they’d been operating. Then again, no one ever did. Maze operators were like fire ants: kill the mound and another pops up.

  Feds flew in to photograph her pickled husk; they pulled samples, led interrogations, confiscated equipment and went home. Nothing came of it. Never did.

  Why don’t they just legalize the thing? Prohibition didn’t stop booze. Weed laws only filled prisons. The Maze and all its promises are here to stay. Freddy is sick of the resistance. He just wants it to stop. They all do. If Sunny Grimm wanted to skinny dip in a vat of whale jizz, that was her right.

  Freddy opens the interrogation room. The heavy door latches behind him. He stops and stares, but not to intimidate him. Kid looks like he should be tagging brick walls, not confessing to Maze activity.

  He sits in the hard chair across from him, reaching deep for the politically correct opener. It comes out partially hollow, mostly rehearsed. “Sorry about your mother. You’re a kid; this isn’t fair. You don’t deserve this.”

  “She’s gone,” Grey says, “because of me.”

  “All right.” Freddy leans back. “Did you kill her?”

  He doesn’t shake his head. Freddy gives him time to find an answer because his mom is dead and that’s what he should do.

  “She’s gone because you were in the Maze,” Freddy finally says. “Is that it?”

  “I was the one that called you.”

  An anonymous caller tipped off the warehouse operation, leading them to the tanks and Sunny Grimm’s marinated body. The place was unlocked when they arrived. The evidence waiting. There was no trace of who called or why.

  “If you were involved, you’re admitting to a felony. You realize that.”

  He stares at the kid’s forehead. It’s not a sweeping glance or polite gander. He lets him know he’s looking for a dot or hole.

  “Did you punch in?” Freddy says.

  “I didn’t say she was dead.”

  “Her body says different, Grey.”

  The kid’s not bothered. He even smiles. Maybe he did off his mom. Then he volleys back.

  “I was in the Maze, Kaleb. You were, too.”

  Kaleb? Freddy looks around the interrogation room. No one knew his middle name, not even Andrew. But that wasn’t what crawled up his spine. You were, too, he said.

  “You were in the Maze?”

  “You know about parallel worlds?”

  “No.”

  “The Maze is an alternate reality that looks exactly like this one. It has this desk, these walls, this building and the streets outside. All the same people living dull lives and frustrations. Including you, Kaleb.”

  “Stop using my middle name. Whatever you think happened, didn’t. Your mom didn’t make it back and I wasn’t there. Those are facts in this reality. So are the laws.”

  “How do you know you weren’t there?”

  “Because I know.”

  “Your memories aren’t the best proof, Freddy.”

  Freddy shakes his head. He’s had about enough of the first name and middle name act. “What are you doing here, Grey?”

  Grey sits rigid, looking thoughtful. “We live in a networked world,” he says. “Satellites, security cameras, electronic eyes are everywhere, no corner left alone. It’s all uploaded somewhere, collated and stored. I suppose the Maze builds a parallel world with this data, a virtual environment that simply pieces together a three-dimensional reality indistinguishable from this one.”

  He knocks on the table. A private grin breaks out.

  “Every speck of dust is accounted for, every mannerism, every piece of litter and drop of dew. Maybe it’s some sort of quantum absorption, an essential snapshot of this world of flesh and bone and everything in it—you, me, our thoughts and beliefs. Because you were there, Freddy. You just don’t know it.”

  For a moment, he looks like a kid filled with wonder, seeing the world for the first time, like he knows how the universe works. He’s just an eighteen-year-old kid who just lost his mother. Instead of cursing God or running away, he’s nodding along like death is just a doorway to a room full of virgins.

  Freddy looks up. The interrogation room recorded every conversation. It would be enough to convict him, but he won’t do it. There’s no proof, really. Honestly, he just doesn’t want to do it.

  It won’t stop the Maze.

  “I’m only going to say this once and I hope you listen. This isn’t the conversation you want to have in this room. Your mom
took the dive, Grey. She did it, not you. I’m sorry, I really am. But you need to go home, make amends with your dad, talk to a therapist or priest or girlfriend. Anywhere but here.”

  Grey drums his fingers. A darker pall falls over him.

  “Someone is guilty,” he says. “That’s why I’m here.”

  LOST IN REALITY

  1

  Sunny

  After the Punch

  HENK CAN’T FIND OUT.

  Sunny Grimm found her son comatose, and her first thought was to keep it from her ex-husband.

  Priceless.

  She came home with groceries. Dirty dishes were in the sink, the orange juice was left out. The mail was on the kitchen island, along with half a dozen dead cans of energy drink. He had a list of chores that was still there, stuck on the refrigerator, held in place by a yellow flower magnet. And all he did was grab the mail.

  She didn’t bother setting down the groceries. Instead, she went to his bedroom and kicked the door open, expecting to find him hunched over a laptop or dumping his brain in that virtual reality headset, slack-jawed and stupid. This would be the last time.

  She was right about that.

  The gunshot sound of the door smacking the wall would make him scream. He’d start promising to clean up, like always, swear that he lost track of time, like always. He didn’t know her shift was over. Was it morning already? Sunny was going to break some shit.

  She dropped the milk instead.

  There was a thing around his head. It wasn’t a chunky headset or VR goggles. It looked new and dangerous. She’d never seen it before. A ghostly shiver pulled the short hairs on her neck.

  “Grey?”

  His arm was tacky; his shirt sour. His chest was slowly rising and falling, long and methodical. She hesitated to touch him, afraid his flesh would be room temperature. Instead, he was feverish.

  “Grey? Honey?” she whispered. “What are you doing?”

  She tapped his chin, traced his cheeks. His eyes didn’t jitter beneath the lids; lips didn’t twitch. That thing around his head, she didn’t know what it was—a hefty knob centered between his eyes, his brown hair curling around a thick strap holding it snug. A cable was plugged into the knob and ran beneath the bed. Black equipment was hidden in the corner, lights blinking, drives breathing. She didn’t know what the box was or the thing on his head, but she knew the symbol embossed on them.

  “No. No, no, no.”

  She held up her phone, thumb over the glass. She’d heard rumors about the symbol, that it was not wise to search about comatose teenagers and malicious knobs connecting their foreheads to modded computers. People listened closely to those searches. What people, she didn’t know. The police, the feds, or someone worse, it didn’t matter.

  She needed that thing off his head.

  She deconstructed his bedroom, kicking dirty clothes, pouring desk drawers on the floor, turning over milk crates and boxes of discarded gear. His desk was cluttered with empty cups and plates with dried ketchup. A pile of papers of a scattered research project on something called Foreverland.

  A wristwatch was balanced on a tin box, the digital numbers turning over. Masking tape was wrapped around the band, small letters stenciled in black marker. For Mom. It was how he labeled his presents. Last Christmas it was a cuckoo clock in a plastic bag, tape pressed on the side.

  For Mom.

  The tin box rattled onto the floor. It was his old vape pen holder with weird stickers of a serpent eating its own tail. The vape pen was on the desk, a shiny metal pipe that looked dangerous. She thought he’d quit after her nuclear meltdown a year ago.

  She paced the room and dialed. “Pick up, Donny. Pick up, pick up, pick up—”

  “I’m off the clock, Grimm.”

  “Donny, come over, now.” She could hear him sucking on the long end of a hookah. “Donny?”

  “I’m waiting for the punch line.” His words were smoke-filled.

  “I need you here, now.”

  “Use a hairbrush or a showerhead or whatever works down there, Grimm.”

  “Stop—” Her hair was too short to grab. “Just listen to me. I’m calling you a car.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this on the phone.” Her lips pulled into a thin line.

  “Why can’t you talk?”

  “What don’t you understand, Donny?”

  “You’re on the phone talking and you can’t talk is what I don’t understand.”

  She breathed into the phone, a wounded animal not to be mistaken for one in heat. Donny would be the last person to call to get laid.

  “Goddamn it.” He sighed.

  Sunny killed the connection. She picked up the half-empty milk jug and closed the bedroom door to put the groceries away and start some coffee. Pretending her son wasn’t a breathing funeral display, she lit a vanilla-scented candle and went for the aspirin above the stove.

  The time was flashing three o’clock.

  The mail was on the counter. An empty package was left open, the address label ripped off. No return address. No invoice, no instructions.

  She went back into his bedroom, hoping this was a dream, that he’d be sitting at his desk. She would hug him even if he was packing a bong. Everything needed perspective. She came back to the kitchen with his phone, laptop and the silver pipe. A tiny light glowed as she sucked a blue cloud of cherry menthol. The urge to vomit swelled in her throat.

  She took another hit.

  His browser history was clean. The email log was empty. His phone was locked and she didn’t know the code. It wouldn’t matter. What was she going to do, call a random friend?

  Hi, this is Sunny Grimm. Grey’s mom. Yeah, have you guys been experimenting with awareness leaping wetware in, say, the last twelve to twenty-four hours? Oh, Grey is sleeping, I just thought I’d ask. No worries. Please don’t tell your parents or call the police.

  Who was she kidding? Grey didn’t have friends except for Rachel and she hadn’t been around lately. Her son was a loner bored with school. He wasn’t much crazy about people in general.

  Nut, meet tree.

  It was all the same reasons Sunny had quit medical school. Well, she’d stopped going in the first semester, so she was hardly a med student. It was a career plan that didn’t make much sense for her. She needed something that minimized human contact, someplace she could get paid to push a button. She had lowered the bar until it lay on the floor. Sound choice-making was not a skill set she’d acquired.

  Sunny did everything on her own because no one did anything for her. Never had.

  Maybe she deserved it.

  The world isn’t going to hell. It’s already there.

  She cleaned her face, washing off the smell of third shift, a plastic odor that followed her home. The yellow bandana around her neck smelled salty. Three stories below, the asphalt shone with brake lights. Her streaked reflection looked back through a haze of cherry menthol. What few tears survived childhood had dried up in a sexless marriage.

  The sky cried for her.

  Her eyes stared from sunken pockets, verdant green with light spokes radiating from large pupils. Her graying hair was cut near the scalp. A horizontal scar was high on her forehead, just below the hairline—a jagged gash that was more Jack Ripperish than Harry Potterish. It was where her uncle dropped her, or where she fell off her bike, or was bitten by a dog. No one really knew.

  She vaped and watched cars pass through watery lines as she strapped the digital watch on her wrist, leaving the masking tape in place. The old pawnshop cuckoo clock Grey had bought her for Christmas was stuck.

  She didn’t bother winding it.

  DONNY ARRIVED THIRTY minutes later. Or maybe it was an hour. Time was warped from the heat of desperation, stretched and pummeled until it stood still or raced past. Sunny watched him through the distorted window, rain slashing his grizzly frame crawling out of the compact automobile.

  He grunted when she opened the front
door.

  Sunny stepped aside, eyes pried wide, heavy words stuck on the back of her tongue. She pointed at the bedroom. Donny, half-lidded and unshaven, smelling of spiced apple and peppermint, dragged his feet through the apartment. He was weary when he arrived, grumbling when he walked inside. He never went straight home after third shift, not even after a double. It was straight to the café for a hookah to calm the nerves. Now he was wide-eyed. Almost hyperventilating.

  “Holy shit.”

  He stood in the doorway, fingers fluttering over his mouth. Somewhere in those thick whiskers, his tongue darted over his lips, something he did when he was in trouble at work.

  He hit a soggy spot of milk, looked at his shoe, and kicked a pile of clothes. She told him to look under the bed. A few minutes later, he came out with a velvet bag with a loose gold drawstring.

  “Where’s the box?” he said.

  “Box?”

  He pointed at the mail. Sunny stepped away. He studied the torn label, turning it over. The velvet bag in his hand was empty. No tag, no logo.

  “You better sit down.”

  “What the hell is going on, Donny?”

  He took the pipe from her and sucked on it hard. Thin clouds streamed from his nostrils. He nodded, pulling a deeper drag.

  “A punch, Grimm.”

  “What?”

  “That thing around his head...”

  She knew it. Just needed to hear someone say it out loud, confirming this wasn’t a dream. Awareness leaping was more alluring than any drug invented by God or human, a new addiction that never gave back its victims. Twelve-step programs didn’t exist for it.

  Wealthy addicts used submersion tanks and respirators, sensory manipulators that drew them into a lucid dream as real as the rug under her feet. When the dream was over, they were hoisted out and returned to the skin. Some claimed it was nothing more than a recreational addiction. A good time. Drinks with friends, a day trip to fantasyland.

  Most people couldn’t afford tanks. There were places that leased trips, but those were inaccessible and legally questionable. There were other ways to get there, one-way tickets that transported the awareness through a cable and left the body behind.