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From his place on the floor, Dr. Coomer watched as Gordon Freeman did not fall asleep. They were in one of the few safe, secluded rooms left in Black Mesa, and they’d determined it was as good a place as any to sleep. Benrey had disappeared to god knows where, but Tommy and Bubby were collapsed on either side of Dr. Coomer, unconscious the moment they hit the ground. Dr. Coomer, however, could not bring himself to sleep. He lay there, as he had every time their group had rested since he had jumped beyond the bounds of Black Mesa, and he watched the man who called himself Gordon Freeman.
Gordon somehow didn’t notice Dr. Coomer’s eyes were still open; limp on the ground and silent was apparently enough to signal sleep to him. Dr. Coomer watched as he talked to himself, as he seemed wont to do when he thought the others weren’t listening. His hands lifted to either side of his head, and he suddenly fell to the ground as if his strings were cut. Coomer could hear him still speaking, albeit more distantly, and then came the moment he dreaded.
Dr. Coomer’s world went, in an instant, entirely dark. He was wracked with pain as his entire essence unraveled like a spool of thread thrown down a mountain. He would have screamed if he had a mouth to scream with.
He was struck with a sick feeling of envy for Tommy and Bubby and their ability to sleep through their world being shut down. The first time he woke up after attempting to escape the bounds of his reality, he had grabbed the nearest thing to him and gasped for breath. That had turned out to be Bubby, who complained about Coomer grabbing him so hard his arm would be bruised, but he softened imperceptibly when he saw the panic on Coomer’s face. Coomer attempted to describe what had happened in hushed whispers, but Bubby brushed it off as a nightmare and blamed it on the stress of the past several days.
It wasn’t a dream.
Coomer floated in the void, a disjointed series of pixels and lines of code loosely collected in the depths of the Player’s CPU. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. To realize his entire existence was a fiction made of ones and zeros… it was tearing him apart in more ways than one.
“Hey.”
He didn’t hear the voice, exactly, but he became vaguely aware of being spoken to. It took effort to process the experience, but when he did, he registered it as familiar. He couldn’t see Benrey, necessarily, but he could summon an image to mind of the guard’s shape being formed by disconnected segments of code like a constellation. The Benrey in his mind’s eye tilted its head once it could tell Coomer was paying attention.
“Ah! Security chief Beret! Is that you?” Coomer attempted to communicate. It worked, if the trace of a smirk he could envision amongst the faint pixels was any indication.
“Yeah. What’s up, Dr. Coomer.”
Dr. Coomer took a moment to respond, sifting through conflicting thoughts. Part of him remembered affectionate fondness and friendship with Benrey. He could remember inside jokes and shared lunch breaks and helping Benrey hide its more alien nature from Black Mesa’s eyes. He remembered telling Benrey that he thought of it as his own son; it had thrown its head back and laughed but had not complained.
But part of him, a louder portion lately, looked at Benrey and saw, not his friend, but a sharp-featured, poorly articulated shape of a man, and his mind helpfully provided the file name monster_barney. The memories he had with this entity were even less real than either of them. It was just a background NPC, just there to open doors and offer support, just as he was a background NPC that was there to guide the Player through newly unlocked skills.
He could sense Benrey’s unease the longer he remained silent. “Well,” Dr. Coomer attempted to inject his words with his typical cheer, “I believe we might be royally fucked!”
“Ha!” Benrey didn’t laugh often, but Dr. Coomer was proud to say he was the one to break through its stony exterior the most. In his mind’s eye, he could envision the sardonic smile on Benrey’s face as clear as day. “Yeah, it’s… it’s bad out here, man.”
“How long have you known?” Coomer had suspected that Benrey might be aware of the constraints of their reality, and this was as good a confirmation as any.
“Pretty much from the start. Wasn’t sure, but I figured it out pretty quick.” Benrey’s constellation of code shifted and folded its arms. “Freeman’s not sneaky. Thinks he’s sooo stealthy, but he’s, uh, not. Got big clown shoes on, letting everybody know.”
“I must say, I would’ve much preferred not knowing! Ignorance is bliss, as they say, and knowledge has proven to be excruciating!” Benrey didn’t say anything in response to that, but it didn’t need to. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how to break out of this damned game, do you?”
“Nah. I’ve been looking around, but I would’ve found it by now.”
“Have you tried brute force? That is my specialty!” Dr. Coomer tried to emphasize his statement with a flex, but was reminded of the constraints of their existence at the moment. He got his point across, though, if the amusement rolling off of Benrey said anything.
“I thought it was, uh, waste management.”
“Who’s to say they aren’t one and the same?”
Benrey snorted softly and fell silent. For a brief, horrible moment, Coomer lost track of it in the void and was struck with the terror of being utterly alone. And then he unfocused his gaze and saw Benrey again, looking out into an environment that was endless and claustrophobic all at once.
“I think we’re stuck, dude,” it eventually said. “We just keep going till the end, big final boss, linear plot. We’re on a rail, ell-oh-ell.”
The summary of Chapter 8: On A Rail appeared unbidden in Coomer’s mind, and he felt momentarily ill. “And what happens then?” he asked.
“The game turns off,” Benrey said simply. Existential dread tied knots in Dr. Coomer’s gut.
“Well, we can’t let that happen, can we?” he said, desperate for a solution. He could feel Benrey side-eye him.
“What’re you saying?”
“I... I don’t know.” Coomer’s confidence faltered for a moment. “Gordon must be the solution, isn’t he? As a vessel for the Player, he could be our ticket out of here!”
Benrey tilted its head like it was considering Coomer’s proposition. “We could kill him.”
“...What?” That hadn’t been what Dr. Coomer was suggesting at all.
“Yeah. Fuck him up real good, scare him baaaaad.” It shrugged. “Show him how it feels. Our city now.”
Dr. Coomer had to admit, the idea of exposing Gordon to a fraction of the torment their codes had subjected them to was compelling to a vindictive part of him. But still, he hesitated. “What if he simply respawns at the last checkpoint? Checkpoints can be used to save your progress!”
“I dunno. Means we’ve got more time till the game is over, though.”
Coomer thought about the game turning off for good, leaving him stranded in excruciating nothingness or, worse, deleted from existence entirely, and he shuddered. “I suppose. It might even sway him to consider our plight!”
“Maybe.” Coomer knew that tone of voice, but he didn’t care if Benrey didn’t believe him. Optimism was as much a defense mechanism as it was a mindset.
“He has to be our way out. He simply has to be.” Desperation was bleeding into Coomer’s words. Benrey didn’t respond. “His model is just as much code as the rest of us, isn’t it? What if we were able to interact with his model in such a way that we can reach him in the Real World?”
“Uh… Sure, man.” It clearly had no idea what Dr. Coomer was talking about, but that was alright. Coomer was already formulating a scheme in his mind’s eye. He would have to overwhelm the Player somehow…
A silence fell between them, though one not nearly as comfortable as it usually was. Whatever “usually” could mean, Coomer supposed, when nearly every memory he had with Benrey was a fiction. It made him ache to think about, and suddenly the silence was too uncomfortable to dwell in.
“Benrey,” Dr. Coomer spoke up.
“Huh?” Though it was just an assortment of pixels and code, Coomer could feel Benrey’s attention, having drifted who knows where, focus back onto him with the intensity of a laser.
“Though none of this is real, I have to believe my feelings are.” Coomer tried to infuse his words with as much confidence as he could, as if believing in it hard enough could assure its reality. “I still cherish your friendship. Video game character, AI, string of code or not, I still stand by my statement that you are like a son to me.”
A rare genuine smile pulled at the edges of Benrey’s mouth. “Lame,” It said at first, immediately followed by, “Love you too, Dr. Coomer.”
“Whatever happens out there, you will still be my friend.” In the back of his mind, he could sense the Player’s computer begin to load their game file. They wouldn’t be in the void for much longer.
“Yeah,” Benrey said, voice oddly mournful, “Whatever happens.”
Dr. Coomer watched the world load in pixel by pixel and wished for sleep.