Episode Twenty-Three: Anguish

    William, Jim, and Elizabeth stood silently on the deck of the boat. Elizabeth still had the phone open in her hand. Jim sighed heavily and looked up at the sky. William's words, “he knows”, still hung in the air.
    “What does Dean know?” she asked.
    “The Endless Frontier isn't really endless. It will only expand as long as there is room for the new landscape to fit in the computer's memory. If the memory were full, the horizon would move away from us and we could walk into the void, triggering an emergency exit sequence. That is what we were really looking for. The edge of the world.” William spoke softly and slowly. “We only have three more days to look, and forty-eight percent of the memory to fill up. We never would have made it, even if he didn't know.”
    “So why did you want me to have him reset the program?”
    “Every time you start the program it opens a new file. I hoped there wouldn't be enough memory to fit the origin valley and the program would fail to restart, letting us out. Or, even better, the origin valley would barely fit. That way we could cross the horizon when Dean wasn't ready. It doesn't matter now. Thanks for trying to help.”
    “William,” said Jim, speaking up. “I think you should accept Dean's offer.”
    “No,” said William.
    “He's right,” said Elizabeth. “The only way any of us have a chance at getting home is if you help him until you get a chance to escape.”
    “Isn't Dean going to let you back out. You could easily pretend that we lied to you. I told William that we should lie to you. He is the one who wanted to give you a chance to really help us against Dean. Pretend you didn't know it was lie. He will still think he is on your side.”
    “I don't think that will work. He was really cold with me on the phone right now, and he knows I'm considering going to the police. I think I've become part of the evidence that he has to get rid of. I think I have about the same chance of you getting out of here, Jim. William, you really do have a chance. And make sure that Dean will keep us alive as part of the deal.”
    “I will never cooperate with Dean again,” said William. The tone of his voice was final.
    “William,” said Jim, “please think it over. You don't actually have to help him at all. Tell he that you will help, then get help as soon as you can. No one would tell you it was dishonest to deceive him, think of what he has done to us. It is good and right to fight him back, even through deception.”
    “I already told you, Jim. I will not even talk with him.”
    “Do you want to die?”
    “I would rather die with a clean conscience than live knowing I had helped that monster destroy more lives,” William shouted back. “I've already been tormented by knowing my dream has become a prison. All the good I've worked for he has turned to evil. I cannot trust him with anything, and refuse to give him another chance to take advantage of me.”
    “What are you going to do then?”
    The two men stood with less than two feet between them. After a moment of silence, William dropped his eyes, then looked out to sea. “I'm going to look for the horizon. If I have a million to one chance, I have to try. You taught me that. Perhaps Dean lied about the memory to get us to stop looking.”
    “You know that isn't true.”
    “I have to do something.”
    “Call Dean.”
    “I already told you—”
    “I said, call Dean. If you really have to do something, do that. It the only chance we have.”
    “I'm sorry Jim. I can't”
    “You disgust me,” said Jim turning away. He stormed into the cabin and slammed the door.
    William remained standing, looking at the cabin door, smoldering.
    Elizabeth, who had shrunk away from the heated discussion and was sitting on the railing turned back to William. “I don't have any right to judge you, but do you know why Jim hates you?” she couldn't help the sarcasm that slid into her voice. “Because if you have your way, his children will grow up without a father.”
    William exploded with furry, “I never trapped anyone in here! This is not the world I tried to make! I didn't even know Jim before his maniac brother threw him in here!” For the next few minutes the air was full of his angry shouts. Some were directed at Dean, some at Elizabeth, some at Jim for not understanding him, and others where at himself for not realizing what Dean was planning until it was too late. He paced up and down the deck, considered jumping overboard, in general acted like a caged tiger.
    Elizabeth was surprised at her own calmness. She patiently waited for William to calm down. With Jim in the cabin there was no where William could go to be alone. Eventually he sat down on the far side of the boat looking out to sea.
    “After we successfully made mind connections to mice, Dean and I went to a poor village on the other side of the world to test the equipment on humans,” said Elizabeth, coming up behind William. Caught up in his own grief, William was unable to form thoughts in a response to her sudden confession. “After we announced the price we were willing to pay for anyone willing to volunteer for an experiment we had a line of around a hundred people, but after the first few experiments they people of the village realized they wanted nothing to do with us. The first man's connection was only partial, and the input was a recording of a movie. Horrified at what he saw—we realized later it had been scrambled—he covered his eyes, but that only made it worse because the real world vanished, but the wild moving colors became more vibrant. He was lucky though, afterward everything was normal for him. In that village we left two men blind and a child who developed frequent seizures as a result of our failed mind connection, before the locals got together and drove us out at gun point.
    “I was devastated. At first I refused to help Dean anymore. He kept preaching to me about the good of science and how although a few would be hurt until we got it right, the technology would bless millions in the future. Reluctantly I resumed helping him, but I never let him accept child subject.
    “By the time we were back in the United States, I was having nightmares every night. If I had gone to the police then, I might have gotten away with only a little prison time fine, but I didn't. To cover our tracks we had to pretend it was a vacation. You can read the whole big lie on my blog, which is kind of funny because that is the only post I have made in the past year.
    “Just when I had promised myself I would never get involved with that kind of thing again, Dean told me that Troy was going to discover our illegal experiments if we didn't do something to stop him. After that I just kind of became numb to it all, following Dean every instruction and praying no one would ever find out.” After her confession, Elizabeth fell quiet and watched the waves pass under the boat. The evening was coming on, and the wind was cool. Tears streamed down her face.
    “Why did you tell me that?” asked William.
    “I don't know. Maybe I just needed to say it to someone, and since Dean betrayed you too, I thought you might understand. He has ruined everything for me.”
    “Do you really think I should pretend to help him?”
    “It is better than giving up.”
    They sat in silence for a long time.
    “Fifty-two percent. You must have put a lot of hard drives into the computer.”
    “Just eight.”
    “That's it? What size?”
    “I don't know. Large, but just ordinary one you could purchase on-line.”
    “But that doesn't make sense. Even with eight commercial hard drives we would at least be around seventy or eighty percent. I can't believe my math is that far off.”
    “Why does it matter?”
    “Just. I wonder if maybe Dean is lying, trying to get us to stop looking for the horizon.”
    “If you really think there might be a chance, I'll help you keep looking. I don't like who I have become, and if we never get out, I'll never have a chance to change.”
    “And if we don't find the horizon by the time the week is up. I'll negotiate with Dean.”