Book Five, Chapter 31: Theme Puzzle

When I first saw the enemy tropes for this story, I thought it was an escape room, a genre of horror film in which a character pits their wits against obstacles to try and escape to freedom.

It was safe to say I was right.

First, it was essential to understand how NPCs worked. We watched and studied them as best we could. The surrogates were not normal NPCs who would follow the script and could be persuaded, convinced, or intimidated. These surrogates followed our suggestions… but Andrew, Michael, and Lila embodied the saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

I wanted to jump through the screen and strangle them. Isaac convinced Michael to bang up a sleeping chamber easily because that was something Michael was already inclined to do. Getting them to act against their preset personalities was beyond difficult.

“He acts just like the real Andrew,” Cassie said. “Isaac, look. He cleans his glasses the same way. He’s just like him.”

On the IBECS, Andrew breathed onto his glasses to form condensation and then wiped them clear.

“I’m pretty sure all people with glasses do that,” Isaac said. “If he starts talking about Green Day or rollercoasters or teacup pigs, then maybe I’ll be convinced.”

The Hughes siblings were on duty watching the surrogates. Not that they needed watching. They weren’t going anywhere without our help.

I was examining the design of the IBECS, which we had access to through one of the large 3D cubes like the one I had played with near the launch pad. Finding it was not easy (it was in a storage closet with a sci-fi door that only appeared when Rudy, the captain, walked by), but once we had it, we had to learn how to use it. We could only see as much of the ship as the surrogates had unlocked. That was a limitation placed by Carousel because I couldn’t see an in-story reason for it.

I stared at the hologram for so long that something finally clicked.

“I got it,” I said. “If we can get them to block off the air intakes in hallway 3A, that will trigger the system to open up the door into Reservoir B in order to ventilate the ship. Once they’re in Reservoir B, they can pass directly into hallway 3B.”

Antoine stared at the same diagram I was looking at and nodded his head.

“The module design is driving me crazy,” he said, staring at the little hologram as I showed him the arrows that explained the airflow system. “These rooms are right next to each other, but they don’t share a ventilation system. 3B is connected to the life support system in the back, and 3A is connected to the secondary emergency system in the front. This is absurd.”

It was.

He walked over to the red button that seemed to be a universal “talk to the Player surrogates” button and started to relay my idea Off-Screen.

The player surrogates heard our plan but didn’t act on it because they were Off-Screen, and something like that had to happen On-Screen.

They wouldn’t be On-Screen for a bit because, at that moment, the Wallflower surrogate Lila had taken too many of the sleeping pills she found, and Dr. Andrew Hughes was trying to keep her alive after having pumped her stomach. This was just one of many things going on with the surrogates. They would follow our suggestions, but they also kept adding drama to the story against our will.

“She’ll be fine,” Dr. Hughes said. “You wouldn’t be surprised to find out that one of the few medical events the Med Bay was prepared for was an overdose.”

He stood over her and placed the back of his hand on her clammy forehead.

“Did she say why she did it?” Michael asked cautiously. “Don’t tell me she’s…” He trailed off, not wanting to say the words, not wanting to put those words out into the air.

“No, nothing like that,” Andrew said. “She’s been having difficulty getting to sleep now that her Deep Sleep Chamber has stopped responding to her. Insomnia can skew judgment.”

There was a pause as they both looked down at the pale young woman.

“In that case,” Michael said, “I could sure use some of those sleeping pills. Every time I close my eyes, I feel bugs all over me. If I could find anything flammable around here, I would set myself on fire.”

Michael had a morbid sense of humor, I had learned over our time watching him.

We had sat and watched them as Lila slowly took one sleeping pill at a time throughout the night in an attempt to get some respite from the bugs. It didn’t work. It was possible she didn’t realize she was taking too many—even we didn’t realize what was happening until Andrew sounded the alarm.

They had created a sort of camp in the Med Bay that they had been able to get to. The solitary benefit of that room was that it had four individual beds, which were separated from the ground by a sturdy metal pole. They greased up the metal pole in hopes that the bedbugs would not climb it while they slept.

They had not been entirely successful.

The scene itself was actually powerful and hefty, with character work and conversations about life and death.

It was frustrating for us, though, because this is what they did instead of going out and looking for ways to move forward with the escape. They were not scouting for us.

I assumed that was by design. The only way they would move forward was if we helped them. Due to Lila’s health problems, they had been On-Screen and Off-Screen and were now getting an Off-Screen break.

Based on what had come before, it was clear that as soon as they came back On-Screen, they would try our plan. First, they would have to set it up on film by pretending they came up with it, and then they would have to enact it by blocking off the air vents in an entire hallway.

Using an officer to try to trick IBECS wasn’t working anymore—that was a one-time thing. It would be a pretty dull story if they could use him as some passport to get around the ship. Now, we had to come up with other ways to get through the labyrinth.

It was one big puzzle.

They went back On-Screen.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about the way the air circulates in this ship,” Andrew said. “It’s all algorithmic. I’m not even sure how much control IBECS has over it consciously.”

“What are you saying?” Michael asked as he sat up on his high-tech gurney.

“I think we can trick it into opening the door to the starboard reservoir.”

“We can trick it?” Michael repeated.

“Yes,” Andrew said. “It’s just a matter of making it think that there’s an airflow problem. It will automatically fix itself, regardless of what the insane machine wants to think.”

“I thought IBECS was designed to fix itself. How long would that trick work?” Michael asked.

“Long enough for us to walk through a door,” Andrew said.

Michael looked back over his shoulder at the sedated but healing Lila.

“Tell me what to do,” he said.

So we watched them as they took rags soaked in some goo that looked almost like vapor cream and started clogging all of the ventilation in hallway 3A.

It was the most frustrating wait possible because I didn’t even know if my plan would work. Unlike us, they didn’t seem to understand they were on a time clock despite us having told them they were. It just went in one ear and out the other. Their characters didn’t know about the fuel situation, or at least they didn’t know how dire it was.

They never acknowledged us talking to them after the conversation ended, so it made sense that they wouldn’t be able to act as if they knew about the fuel problem. There was probably some way to inform them, but we had missed that cutscene.

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They worked, and they spoke of their old lives and old girlfriends when, eventually, Lila found her way to them and asked what had happened.

They were supportive of her, and they had their unit bonding moment with Andrew pledging to keep them all safe until they could one day get home. As he hugged Lila, Michael—being a bit too macho for that—just patted her on the back and said, “Hang in there,” as if he wasn’t sure that the sleeping pills thing was actually an accident.

“Oh dear God, please just clog the damn vents!” Isaac screamed into the abyss from his seat on the upper decks of the flight platform of our ship.

No one argued with him because we all felt the same way. It almost felt like Carousel was teasing us.

Watching them was our only entertainment, and it was getting very frustrating.

“Wait!” Cassie exclaimed. “Bobby’s awake! He just woke up!”

That was good news. Cassie’s Anguish trope allowed her to see the statuses of all of our allies, including whether Bobby was conscious. Since he had been asleep for most of the movie, it was about time he woke up.

“IBECS,” I said, “can you please wave Officer Bobby Gill?”

Luckily, IBECS didn’t put up a fight, and we saw the gigantic room filled with animal bodies connected to tubes that I had seen in the dailies.

I suppressed a grin as the others got a good look at the horrors.

Bobby crawled out of his Deep Sleep Chamber, naked as the day he was born. Literally, no one else had been unclothed in their chambers, but I didn’t have time to ask him about that. He was Off-Screen, so we had the chance to talk to him.

“Bobby!” Antoine screamed.

Bobby’s head perked up, unsure of where the sound came from. He looked around the room. He didn’t seem surprised to see the monstrosities strapped up in their giant vessels, so he must have either had scenes in this room already or just had memories from his character that made them familiar.

He quickly slipped into his space onesie, which all the other passengers were wearing, and continued searching for Antoine’s voice.

“To your left!” Antoine screamed.

Finally, Bobby found it. It would appear that he didn’t actually have a screen showing us; all he had was a little box with a button to communicate with us.

“First Blood has already passed?” Bobby asked.

“Yep,” I said. The injured passengers waking up had counted as First Blood, luckily. Death wasn’t required.