No Escape No Surrender

“Let’s not make this difficult. You don’t want to die. I don’t want to clean up a mess. We can both walk away. Yourself a richer man.”

“I am not going to let you erase the truth. People deserve to know. I am not giving you this notebook!”

“You can either take the $40,000 and be on your way, or I can just put a bullet in your head right now. Either way you are not leaving with the book, so choose wisely.”

The agent cocked his gun and aligned it with Stryker’s eyes.

“Throw it over now. Last chance.”

Stryker folded, hesitantly flinging the book towards the agent’s side of the room. What choice did he have? The agent nodded and reached into his trench coat before slamming a stack of money onto the disheveled desk.

“I’d ask you not to talk about this to anyone.” He paused to light a cigarette. “But who would believe you.” He snickered before collecting the book and disappearing into the shadows.

Stryker reluctantly stuffed the money into his coat before heading home. That notebook had completely changed his world. How he operated, the way he perceived life. It had put everything together for him and things had finally made sense. He wanted to be able to share that with other people and was beside himself that it had been taken from him. He sulked in his ottoman for a good half hour before he attempted to rest.

The black leatherbound notebook spinning, flying, opening, was all he could see when he closed his eyes. It only held one sentence inside, but it was profound, life altering in everyway. The notebook held a mystical power as well. One not easily described, but to put it simply, one knew just by holding it, merely by reading its words, that it held the indefinite truth.

Stryker jumped up with a renewed vigor. He had held the holy grail, he had knowledge that could alter the course of the world. He was not going to have this truth obliterated from existence. He would do whatever it took to try to persuade people of what he had experienced, to spread the message of the book. He held the $40,000 in his hands and smirked, wondering if they wouldn’t have rather assassinated him and dealt with the coverup if they knew what he planned to do next.

He worked tediously over those next few years. Using the money to assist him in publishing several books, going on book tours, holding rallies, growing his online presence; all of which revolved around enlightening people to the message of the book. He wished he could illuminate in better detail how one knew by holding the book that it was the truth beyond any shadow of a doubt, but it was one of those things people usually either had faith in or instead thought him utterly insane. Nevertheless, he had amassed quite a following and believed the movement would only continue to grow.

“So, you are the legendary Stryker Driscoll?” A cute brunette questioned Stryker one night after he’d put on a lecture. She wore vintage black overall shorts with an amethyst blouse underneath. A shimmering silver locket with an emerald gemstone hung from a long thin chain around her neck. This was worn by believers of the book, so they could identity others who shared their beliefs, the message of the book also kept within.

“Yep, that’s me,” he grinned.

“I am fascinated by your work. I’ve read all your books, listen to your podcasts, and this is the second lecture of yours I’ve been to. I tried to catch you after the last one, but didn’t have any luck.”

“Well thank you, I appreciate-”

“I need you to tell me the truth, and I mean just give me total honesty off the record. Do you truly believe all of this stuff or is it some elaborate idea you just came up with as a money-making scheme? Either way I’m impressed.”

“I held the book in my hands. I know it to be the complete truth,” he replied hastily.

“I didn’t mean to offend you. I just needed to ask that question for myself before fully believing something so surreal. We didn’t all get to hold the book,” she pouted. “But I do definitely believe, I can just feel it’s the truth in my core.”

“Yeah sorry, you are right. I am just so used to being called a nut and a liar. I didn’t know if you were a journalist or something just trying to fool me.” He pointed to the necklace.

“Not me.” She flashed a smile.

“Would you like to grab dinner?”

An hour later they sat in a dimly lit restaurant with a slew of hor d’oeuvres half eaten on their table.

“I am also obsessed with the Mandala effect; I’ve had quite a few experiences myself. Oh, and I find it fascinating that physicist James Gates found computer code embedded in equations of string theory. Or the fact that computer code can be embedded into physical strands of DNA. I just can’t believe that other people are able to ignore this evidence.” She took a sip of her bourbon and blushed. “I apologize for talking your ear off. It’s just that usually I am unable to discuss this kind of stuff with anyone.”

“Don’t apologize, I have been enjoying our conversation. It is nice to meet someone whom…” His eyes widened as he watched several agents enter the restaurant and make a b-line towards their table.

“What?”

“We have to go now!” He pulled her from the table and steered her through the kitchen into the back alley. A stray cook smoking a cigarette by the outside door eyed them indolently as they ran off.

“I don’t understand what is going on? Who are we running from?”

“I’ll explain everything later. We need to find somewhere to hide.”

Him and the brunette sprinted until coming across an abandoned shop. Stryker grabbed a nearby brick and broke the back window gaining access to the lock. They darted inside and ran up a questionable staircase before hunkering down in a veiled section of one of the upstairs rooms.

“Stryker,” she whispered. “They are here to stop you from spreading the truth. Aren’t they?”

“Yes. They must have acknowledged that I had found someone else who was awake to everything, and now neither of us are safe.”

“It isn’t fair. Tell me how exactly you came across it? Why don’t they want us to know? Who is in charge of this? Who created it? Why won’t more people awaken? And for those that have, why don’t they fight like you have to enlighten the rest of humanity?” The brunette seemed on the verge of tears.

“I wish I could answer all of those questions. My life was in pieces after the volcano eruptions in 24’. I moved around between the few cities that hadn’t been destroyed before making my discovery. Since then, I have dedicated everything to it, but some things are still so elusive. What I can tell you is that one day I was just like everyone else and then I came across that book, suddenly my whole world transformed. Everything I had known, never truly existed. I had a choice then, I could attempt to free myself and others from the false reality, but risk being hunted down by the system I was a part of, or I could continue within the lie. The thought of losing everything and everyone that one has ever known or loved is overwhelming to many people. Even though I believe most of us must see the glitches and artificialness in everyday life, the repercussions of acknowledging it, of following that rabbit hole, seem too dire, thus is our programming.”

“Do you believe there is a way that someone could escape?”

“I…I don’t. I do not believe that we exist outside of it. We are not physical beings at all, we are codes, a string of numbers. But that doesn’t change our significance if you really think about it. We still exist in a way, have aspirations, encounters. We attempt to live our lives to the fullest, and then cease.”

“Wow,” she shook her head. “I never thought about it like that, but it seems so conceivable once you piece everything together.” She took a deep breath, processing all that she had just heard. “What will they do if they catch us? What will happen to us?”

“Well,” he grasped her hand. “Dying essentially reprograms us, starts our campaigns over. We may be placed in any character or location.”

“So, all of this will have been for nothing. We won’t have any of our current knowledge, we are essentially being reset. Erased.”

“In essence yes. However, we do hold onto fragments of code. All of our experiences are linked to our sequencing, this is what I believe causes déjà vu. Rendering errors or certain glitches allow past fragments of ourselves to be discerned. Therefore, I believe all that we have learned or lived through can be accessed on some level evermore. I promise you. I will never give up, I will expose what I’ve learned, I will always find a way to come back to the truth.”

“I hope that we will both be able to recall all of this.” She smiled and squeezed Stryker’s hand.

“Me too.”

“What about the notebook though?”

“What do you mean?”

“How do you explain how it manifested? Do you think it was originally here or…?”

“It is possible that it was here from the beginning and had been well shrouded, purposely situated as some kind of enigma. Yet, I ascribe to the theory that it was recently placed. Whether due to the stage we are currently in, completed by some kind of automated intelligence or inscribed in the programming, I am unsure. Another concept that makes me hopeful is that a sentient being intervened in an attempt to notify all of us. He created and placed the notebook here in hopes of a great awakening. Perhaps that is also why so many bizarre and incomprehensible events have been occurring as of late. They have been messing with the program so we can all realize how absurd it all is, how all this in fact, cannot be real.”

“When you say sentient being, do you mean human or something else?”

“I honestly haven’t the slightest idea. The possibilities are endless.”

A door thumped open downstairs and subsequent footsteps reverberated as the agents ascended the stairs. Stryker closed his eyes coming to terms with what was about to happen. He cleared his mind of everything except the feelings the notebook had induced and the sentence that had changed everything. He would commit it to his memory, he would inscribe it to his core.

This is a simulation.

This is a simulation.

This is a simulation.