Episode Seven: Meeting of Prisoners

Jim laid back on the hard stone and watched as the clouds passed by.  He tried to convince himself that he was enjoying an especially vivid dream, but the serenity of his surroundings contrasted sharpy with the confusion that clouded his mind.  Dean's words replayed over and over in his memory, haunting him.  A faint hope remained that it was all a dream, and when he woke up both Dean's words and this strange stone in the wilderness would fade to a fuzzy recollection he could tell with humor over the breakfast table.
Suddenly he exploded off the ground and stood on his feet.
Am I dead? the thought scared him.  Dean wouldn't do that; I'm his brother.  The image of two bodies with tubes leapt to the forefront of his memory. He pushed up his left sleeve to look at his shoulder.  To his horror, the three inch scar was gone.  What will happen to Susan?  Anna is only four, will she even remember me? Rachel graduates this spring.  I have to be there.
Jim turned around slowly and examined his surroundings, pushing back the questions that he knew wouldn't help anyway.  First things first—Where am I?  There could see no sign of human life except the stone he stood on, just trees, mountains, and a lake.
I don't think I'm dead.  He wasn't sure what heaven looked like, but he expected lights or music or something.  And angels; there would definitely be angels,  he thought.   Origin.  What does that mean?  Who made this stone?
No amount of reasoning came up with any explanation of any kind.  It must be a dream.  There is no other way to explain it.  This comforted him. Dreams don't make sense, so why bother trying to make sense of it anyway.
With a somewhat forced carefree spirit he climbed the grassy hill to get a better look at his surroundings.

William paced around the table he had moved to the balcony thinking hard.  Occasionally he would pause and look down at the papers on the table.  Sometimes he would sketch a few lines, adjusting one of the four different plans.  Three days ago he had decided to build a water wheel.  Mostly because he needed something to do.  Now his resolve was ebbing.  One plan was clearly the best.  It was the first one he had drawn before he had realized he would have to make his own nails if he wanted to use any, or deconstruct the Lodge for nails.  The lodge had saws, hammers, axes, ropes, working gloves, hand drills, and a wide assortment of other tools.  Explorers don't use nails.  They don't stay in one place long enough to want them.
The silence in The Endless Frontier bothered him.  Without electricity he couldn't chase the silence away with music like usually did.  The only sound was the wind in the trees and creek of the boards when he walked around.
He hadn't really noticed the silence until Troy left.  For the first three days they had talked.  At first they had wondered, then hypothesized, then argued.  On the fourth day Troy woke up early and declared that it didn't matter how he ended up in The Endless Frontier;  he was going to embrace his dream and chase the horizon.  He departed with a canoe full of supplies, headed north toward the waterfall and staircase in the cliff.
William walked away from the table and sat looking out at the landscape.  Everything felt useless here.
To his surprise a man appeared up on the hill coming from the origin.  At first he thought it must be Troy coming back from his adventures; but the man on the hill was wearing a plain white shirt and a pair of jeans, the default clothes.  This meant he had just come from the origin.  The man was taller and had a broader build than Dean.
A thrill of excitement caused William to run down through the lodge and out the front door.  After three weeks of isolation seeing anyone made him happy.  The two of them met about halfway up the hill.  They stopped a few feet apart and looked each other up and down.
“Hi, my name is William Kilgore.  Welcome to The Endless Frontier,” said William.
Jim stepped back as though the words had dealt him a physical blow.  “Are you the William Kilgore,  the one that vanished over a month ago?”
“Yes! Are you here to get us out?  I knew Dean couldn't hide us forever.  Troy isn't here right now, but he took his phone with him.  When he get out we can call and tell him the good news.  What is your name by the way?”
“Jim.  Jim Senoma.  Actually I'm a little bit confused.  You called this place the Endless Frontier.  Where exactly are we?  I got into a fight with my brother.  I think you know him, Dean is his name.  Well I think he drugged me and I woke up on the big strange stone on the other side of this hill.”
Jim saw the hope and joy drain from Williams face.  “Well,” said William, “lets head down to the lodge.  I'll explain as we walk.
Jim listened with growing dread as William explained what had happened.  Jim asked questions from time to time, but mostly just listened.  When William was finished he told him what Dean had said about not wanting to kill them, but that he was running out of money.  
“Then we can only wait here to die,” said William.  They were now sitting on the balcony looking out across the lake.
“There must be something we can do,” said Jim. “You made this program, there must be another way out.”
“Troy and I talked about that a long time.  There is only one way that might work, but it isn't worth the risk.”
“Dean is going to kill us anyway if we just sit here.  We don't have anything to lose.  What is it?”
“Death—I wrote the program to pull you out of The Endless Frontier if your virtual self dies.  But neither Troy nor I think it is worth trying.  Dean, the expert on brains, would have thought of that and he doesn't seem worried that we will escape that way.  I think you would die both here and in reality.”
Images of Susan and his kids kept floating through Jim's mind.   He didn't know what he was going to do, or how he was going to try, but he knew he couldn't just sit there until he died.  “Is there any bug or glitch in the program we could use to make it crash?  Maybe we could get out that way.”
“I've tried for weeks to come up with something.”
“Is there an exit anywhere, a place where you walk through a door or something to get out?”  Jim knew it was a silly suggestion.  If it was that easy, William would have walked out that first day.
“None,” said William, but as that hopeless word hung in the air he remembered something. The thrill of hope he had felt when Jim appeared returned   He stood up and looked Jim in the eye.  “Wait,  you're right. There is one way out.”