[ WP ] Sleep creates `` Save Points '' in case we die .

Load most recent save? 
 
 First time he'd seen that question, scrawled softly in white through the darkness. First time that it was n't a static image on a computer screen, anway. This time the words had a depth through space and time and the darkness had no edge and he knew that he had died. 
 
 A thought warped by vertigo, the last syllable before death and the promise of nothing forever - YES. 
 
 He woke on a matress that was n't his own. A stained and lumpy thing that lay in an empty apartment. Not his apartment. Except for some cartons of uneaten Chinese food and a 2-liter of soda the place was clean and bare. He could n't say how he'd come to this place, he did n't remember dying, and he was afraid. 
 
 The bathroom possessed the same accute emptiness as the room with the matress. There was nothing in the fridge. When he looked out the window, he saw outside, far below, a city street full of people. They walked, jogged, got in and out of cars - he felt a brief but intense aftershock of vertigo as he realized that all these people were going steadily forward with their lives and routines, and not a single one of them cared to look up and acknowledge his awareness of this fact. 
 
 How had he come here? He searched his memory and found it as empty as the apartment. His name was Jason Riffkin and he delivered pies for rent money and sold weed for club money - at least he remembered that much. Jason. It comforted him to think it. He said it out loud. 
 
 `` Jason.'' 
 
 Alright, so he had died. He knew he was n't the first to reload, and he would n't be the last, but most people did n't. And the ones who did - well they tended to be more than pie-slinging weed-chucking headbangers from the Sloots. 
 
 He called his mother. 
 
 `` Mom.'' 
 
 `` Jason?! You called your mother!'' 
 
 `` I think I died last night.'' 
 
 `` Oh Jason...'' 
 
 `` I'm in a strange place and I do n't remember anything.'' 
 
 `` I thought you were going to give all that up.'' 
 
 `` All what?'' 
 
 `` The drugs, the parties. The - sluts.'' 
 
 `` I'm serious. I think I reloaded.'' 
 
 Running footsteps from the hall and then a BANG as the door to the apartment crashed open. Through it came a desperate figure, a man in trench coat with fear in his eyes, eyes that darted to the matress first, then to every corner of the room, before lighting upon 
 
 `` Jason! We got ta go, man. They're coming.'' 
 
 `` Who's coming?'' 
 
 `` Who? Who?!! Who's coming, he says.'' 
 
 `` Who are you talking to? What are getting yourself into over there?'' 
 
 `` Mom, I'll call you back.'' 
 
 `` They're coming, man. We got ta split. No time. No time.'' 
 
 Jason could n't find a good reason not to believe in the man's desperation. he followed him out into the hall, where he stopped suddenly short. 
 
 `` The hell is wrong with you? Come on. No time, man. We ca n't be here.'' 
 
 `` Your name is Sikes,'' Jason said. `` Sikes Malone.'' 
 
 Sikes closed the distance between them with a single violent stride and grabbed him by the shoulders. Sikes stared hard into him. 
 
 `` You reloaded.'' 
 
 `` I think so.'' 
 
 `` Oh man. Oh man. We already fucked it up, man. What do we do? Does n't matter, they're coming. No time is no time.'' 
 
 Jason followed him at a run down twenty flights of stairs, out into the city where all those people went mildly and obvliviously about their routines, and into the back of a white van. 
 
 *** 
 
 Jason felt himself carried blindly through the city in the back of the van, and Sikes asked him questions he could n't answer. 
 
 `` What do you remember?'' 
 
 `` Nothing.'' 
 
 `` Is this the first time you reloaded?'' 
 
 `` I do n't know. I think so.'' 
 
 `` But you remember me. Do you remember Lacy? Do you remember the night at the Cut?'' 
 
 `` We met at the Cut?'' 
 
 He felt the van turn and turn again. The sounds of the city became less until they were gone. Jason wondered who was driving, where they were going, what Sikes knew about reloading - but the questions all tried to escape his brain through his throat at once and asphyxiated there. At last the van stopped and a woman opened the doors. She was pretty but severe. 
 
 `` Lacy?'' It was a guess. 
 
 `` Inside. Now.'' 
 
 They were at a small house tucked into the countryside. Jason could just make out the tip of the city skyline. Lacy and Sikes pulled him into the house, sat him down on a sofa, gave him some coffee. The house looked livable but unlived in. 
 
 `` We met two nights ago at the cut. You do n't remember that?'' Lacy took a chair across from him. Sikes stood near the window, looking out. 
 
 `` I know the Cut.'' Jason pictured the metal door cut into the brick wall, the inoccuous neon sign with the broken T, the cramped dance floor inside and the bolted down tables and chairs, the DJ's balcony and the skinny bar in the back. `` Did I sell you guys weed?'' 
 
 Lacy and Sikes exchanged a glance. Jason failed to read it. 
 
 `` We are part of an organization called the Wipers.'' 
 
 `` You guys are Wipers?!'' 
 
 `` We asked you to kill Vincent Roy, and you said yes.'' 
 
 *** 
 
 
 

