Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Dark Exit
    Dark Exit
    Dark Exit
    Ebook69 pages1 hour

    Dark Exit

    By richard schneck

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In a world where telepresence and space flights are common, Jonathan Mayfield fixes the machines that make the other machines possible. 

    A simple malfunction effects him more than it should. Leading him to question his sanity, and causing him to second guess his perception.

    But even his deepest concerns underestimate the truth and scope of the situation.

    His search for the truth may reveal more then he bargained for, as he seeks what may be the "Dark Exit".

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisherrichard schneck
    Release dateMar 15, 2019
    ISBN9781393012092
    Dark Exit

    Read more from Richard Schneck

    Related to Dark Exit

    Related ebooks

    Psychological Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Cruel Means, Bitter Ends

      Nov 10, 2021

      “In order for this speech to mean anything to me, I’ll need to dispense with the usual demagoguery and, instead, make an attempt at honesty. With this in mind, there is one thing I have to make clear. I’m not in this race to serve your interests, but

      12 min read

    • Article

      The Memento

      Jan 16, 2022

      In the middle of the night, after a particularly tough day of interrogations in a Beijing security facility, the artist and dissident Ai Weiwei began to write what would become 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrow: A memoir. His tough, implacable interrogat

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Centre

      May 6, 2021

      The Centre
      8 min read

    • Article

      Performance

      Nov 10, 2022

      “Wait here,” the guard said as he shut the door behind him, leaving me by myself. The floor inside the lab was polished, and the air smelled of disinfectant, and yet the room felt unclean. Leaves shook on a tree outside the window, making shadows on

      18 min read

    • Article

      Quantum Radio

      Feb 22, 2023

      Quantum Radio
      5 min read

    • Article

      Lost In Time

      Oct 5, 2022

      Lost In Time
      5 min read

    • Article

      Rent Arlington Hall’s Brain: The implant would make him a brilliant pianist for 24 hours.

      Jan 15, 2015

      Eight Hours To Go Thorne hesitated. The clinic’s storefront consisted of a glass elevator that went only down. Below the earth, into the unknown. A sign on its door read in elegant silver script: “Rent a Brain Today, Genius Guaranteed.” Thorne could

      14 min read

    • Article

      Islanders

      Oct 13, 2022

      Islanders
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Great Lindemann

      Jun 26, 2014

      The light dimmed and the murmur of conversation died away. The curtain opened. Lindemann was standing on the stage. He was plump and had a bald spot made all the more noticeable by the few sparse hairs combed over the nakedness of his skull, and he w

      19 min read

    • Article

      The Bargain

      Dec 10, 2022

      “Which one of you owns G2V3889?” Cygnus glided through a luminescent star field suspended in the center of an otherwise dark, oblong studio, then turned in a slow circle to survey the twenty Agents surrounding him. “Come on, speak up.” Vega shuddered

      16 min read

    • Article

      The Rapture Module

      Aug 10, 2022

      Tucker had to do a double take: The spreadsheet returned the correct result. He could have sworn he had made a mistake—his finger slipped—but the cell displayed the number he thought he wouldn’t see. It occurred to him that this was the first time he

      13 min read

    • Article

      No-Signal Area

      Mar 27, 2020

      No-Signal Area
      7 min read

    • Article

      Interview With the Neanderthal

      Jun 14, 2017

      Interview With the Neanderthal
      5 min read

    • Article

      Pleasure Palace

      Sep 1, 2022

      Pleasure Palace
      15 min read

    • Article

      I Feel It

      Mar 15, 2022

      In Majorca, jet-lagged at the airport, Nathan bought a one-liter bottle of Tanqueray, and then, after an hour’s drive, their van stopping in a small, possibly medieval town, a second bottle of gin, soda water, limes. They drove farther, another half

      14 min read

    • Article

      Playing God

      Apr 10, 2023

      After Jack was abducted by the alien spaceship, and after the round vessel had vanished into the Milky Way, he found himself walking down a tubular corridor with white vibrating walls, escorted by a sinuous blonde who smiled graciously and said her n

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Smoke of the Land Went Up

      Mar 4, 2024

      The Smoke of the Land Went Up
      11 min read

    • Article

      Behind The Scenes

      Oct 18, 2021

      Behind The Scenes
      8 min read

    • Article

      Tenet

      Sep 27, 2020

      Tenet
      4 min read

    • Article

      The longest Night

      Mar 28, 2022

      The longest Night
      13 min read

    • Article

      Focus (if You Still Can)

      Jan 7, 2022

      Focus (if You Still Can)
      13 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Dark Exit

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Dark Exit - richard schneck

      Part One

      An alarm bell was ringing .

      Jonathan Mayfield looked down at the severed ends of his arms. The press had triggered itself and slammed down while his hands were still under it. That shouldn't happen, he thought.

      He saw red fluid arcing in pulsating streams across the production line. It cascaded down the front of the impact press, coating the face of the machine like a candy apple. Jonathan thought how oddly it resembled human blood, but he knew better.

      Pooling on the conveyor belt, it began to form small streams. Dripping down, it spread tendrils across the sealed concrete floor. Jonathan heard the whine of the hydraulic pumps desperately attempting to restore pressure.

      The machine before him, malfunctioning, kept raising it's movable bulk up and slamming back down. With each crushing descent the machine ground what had a moment ago been his hands into finer and more misshapen distributions of dirt.

      Time dilated. He saw the entire event as a strange sort of slow motion dance. The arms waving, the fluid spurting, dripping, and the debris in the machine progressively pulverized with each passing beat.

      Thump, hiss, the machine reset.

      Thump, hiss, the machine reset.

      He felt no pain.

      He felt detached from the scene. As though he were watching something happening to someone else, somewhere else, somewhere far away from him. His vision flickered and went black. All that remained was the muffled sound of the alarm bell. He floated in the darkness for a timeless moment.

      A cool breeze moved across the sides of his face and light peeked in from the periphery of his vision. He became aware of someone speaking.

      The bell had stopped ringing. He yanked his face from the rig and started looking around the control room. The drab vaguely green walls of the telepresence shop area, seemed more decayed and moody than usual. His area supervisor, Ned, was looking at him and moving his mouth. Jonathan saw his face shifting around like a mirage.

      A pungent aroma of oil and sweat assaulted his nostrils. He freed his left hand and tried grabbing for the latch to open the rig. The rig encased him like one of the ancient deep sea diving rigs he used to read about when he was a kid. These were much lighter and easier to get into and out of, but were still an elaborate suit that needed to fully surround and encase the operator.

      The dull lighting also felt less calming, and more oppressive than it usually struck him as being. He often found the simple but huge rectangular room with it's unnecessarily high ceiling to be like an oasis, from the complex overdone detail and intricacy of the public parts of the campus.

      The stark and almost rustic atmosphere in this area had always given him the feeling of being backstage or, more accurately, offstage at some high visibility public event.

      He could relax here, away from the scrutiny of the crowds. That's how he thought of the public areas, as a come-on for the suckers. The 'suckers' being the regular workers, and visitors to the plant, or potential clients, or customers. His job was just to keep all the cool attractions working.

      They weren't really attractions, as in rides, or amusements, but he often used those terms when talking about them. They were actually the machines that made the day to day running of the plant possible. He preferred to be here, in this room, alone with these interfaces.

      These things he worked on and tweaked and sometimes redesigned were the very heart of how this place could function as well as it did.

      These rigs were used to link a human operator to a machine drone with such natural response and sensory feedback that it was indistinguishable from a person being present at the location of the drone.

      This melding of man and machine occurred in both directions, when everything worked well. The operator would be completely immersed in the environment that surrounded the drone, as Jonathan had just been, and the drone could perform any task the operator could, exactly as though they were physically present.

      But of course, they could not be physically present, because the locations of the drones were mostly in places that would be too dangerous, or too expensive to actually have a human operator physically there.

      They did a lot of work in space, of course, with the operator safely on the ground. The machine he had been tinkering with, was located in a high radiation plant and did something involving building spacecraft power plants, or some such.

      Jonathan didn't care too much about the drones, or what happened at that end. His job was making the telepresence rigs as accurate and functional as possible. Removing the barrier between man and machine, that's what he did.

      This room seemed far less comfortable than usual. Jonathan thought it was just due to the abrupt cut-off from the telepresence environment that he had just been in. It often seemed more real than the real world, a point of pride for him, but annoying right now.

      "Zhon ... '

      " Ned said. It was reverberating, and far away.

      Jon, are you aminoloey?

      What?

      Jonathan.

      He understood that.

      Jonathan, look at me. Ned shone a penlight into Jon's eyes. He squinted and batted

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1