Chapter 4 - So, How Do We Get the Story Straight?

CODENAME LUMIÈRE – THE SOFT LAUNCH

 
Chapter 05  – So, How Do We Get the Story Straight?
 
 
 
Now that we know more about our hero and what he does, now we need to know how and why he went to bone an endless list of Old Hollywood ladies in their movies?
 
The answer, dear reader, lies on his interest in multiverses, other dimensions and world building. Perhaps his second big interest, besides cinema. Through this, we can finally explain it.
 
As we said, Lumière worked for a company where he was one of the leading VR developing people there. Besides that, he worked at many projects linked to extended reality, alternative universe searching and things of the like. And he had a pet project that is linked to what he liked the most.
 
In this view, he wanted to find a way to connect to every universe of the wishes of anybody. That meant that, to him, there was a way a world composed by anything one wants exists. To him, it was a way where he could find a way to make his dreams to be with his favorite women from the past to happen. 
 
Actually, the real intent about this project was kept secret, as to the world, it would be a way to find other universes and know more about how we aren’t totally alone. But, to his own needs, he built a true laboratory inside his place, with a powerful computer designed for him to find the perfect calculation where he could connect the place he wanted to find.
 
The laboratory connected itself with a number of large batteries and trackers from all over the world. And a well-protected place where he watched several guns to try to find the right track on energy to connect with other dimensions. Lumière did daily searching of those, turning the computer on the most of the day, but to very few successful results.
 
Because of those hurdles, our hero’s ideas weren’t totally supported by his partners. They wanted to keep him just doing what he did best, that was test VR goggles and environments for gamers or movie goers, build AI stuff, create virtual environments for commercial use. Things which kept him from trying to get this wacky idea from his mind.
 
Even Nicolet, the only person who quite did not put his ideas down, saw that project being risky. Mostly because she thought it was being done by a man purely driven by his lust. To her, his mega dimension-searching was pretty much something selfishly done for his perverted needs. Of course he did not liked how he was portrayed by wanting such.
 
“This is not made for perverted needs. This is a challenge, I want to do it because I want to see if it can be done, Nicolet”
 
“If I didn’t know you enough, Lumière”
 
“Why you all keep trying to make me quit? This is what I wanted my whole life. I can’t quit. I have to do it, it’s what I have to do! Do you want me to quit?”
 
“Nobody wants you to quit, darling. We just think you are doing too much for something that is just a thing that panders of something of your liking”
 
“I am not doing it just for myself. I am doing because, someday, everyone might get a way to find it’s own place amidst this world full of plagues, war, hate and prejudice”
 
“I know your intents, but also we know what are your other intents are, Lumière”
 
By one side, Nicolet and the others were somehow right to raise eyebrows on what his plans were. But Lumière had all the right to pursue his dream, even if for many people, it was a way for him to partake into lewd activities. As they say, a man’s dream…
 
For that, he spent a load of his time, money and mind for that. He built a computer station that not many places can have, with a database with the name of every Old Hollywood actress who he liked, from the most famous ones to the ones who acted in obscure movies from those decades. There, he added a large (and large is just an understatement to a man focused like him) database of movies, pictures, scenes, outfits, soundbits. Anything for the device to create the reality he wanted and the way it was supposed to be.
 
However, so far, nothing happened. The more he worked with effort in it, with many combinations and codes and whatever else, nothing but just a brief mass of energy appeared. He spent many hours there studying it and trying to find a connection to another world, only to not find it. That wouldn’t make him quit, it was too much, as he said, for him to leave when he put the biggest effort of his life in his pet project.
 
Countless times he tried solutions for that, but nothing. Would mean that the only way to get his contact with the women that grew up with him on the screen was through TV or his mind? Lumière wasn’t the kind of person to quit. To him, quitting his project meant killing himself without actually doing it. Would be the end of his life, his dreams, his purpose and whatever else he fought during his life.
 
Probably you want to know how it happened and now time to move on from ‘mumbo-jumbo’ to get where we want to be in this story. Days went by and the things stood the same, no verifiable progress in it. And pressure for his bosses to try to get to the things that weren’t burdening to him were bigger as ever…
 
But there was one night where everything changed. And it was pretty much out of the blue.
 
One day, a Thursday, Lumière found himself alone in his place, as Nicolet went to spend the weekend with her parents at another city. The silence of his home, completely high-tech and full of entertainment for him, was there. And the best thing he found was to spend the day watching random old movies with the women he fawned upon.
 
Maybe five or six movies he watched and then, by night, he found himself bored and turned off the TV. After doing what he had do, he went to his suite to sleep when he heard something.
 
What it was? 
 
He when turned around, thinking it was a fly. It wasn’t
 
And then the noise became louder…
 
“Lumière… Lumière”
 
He turned around once again.
 
“Who is there? Nicolet? Are you here?”
 
“Lumière…”
 
It was a female voice, who he couldn’t recognize but which said his name. Imagining that the movie binge maybe messed his mind, he thought a good night of sleep was good. But not much of sleeping for him, as it continued.
 
And the worse, it wasn’t just one voice. It was different kinds of voices, some seductive, others like if it was a smile. Some in accents of various kinds. He woke up with words in his ears.
 
“Come… we need you… we want you”
 
Would he getting crazy after all? It was what Lumière thought as he left the bed and scrambled around the house, as the voices continued to call his name. He tried to know where it was, but to no avail. When he went to his lab… the voices became bigger.
 
“What is going on?”
 
His lab had every single security system he could pay, with several layers of identification sources, from voice to his eyes. Once in, the voices stopped, except by one.
 
‘Come…”
 
Slowly, he walked in direction to the machine, cased on a heavily-bordered ‘aquarium’, made with a sort of glass who wouldn’t break even if subjected to massive energy. Made to avoid that, if something wrong happened, the world wouldn’t suffer because of that.
 
Once inside the ‘aquarium, the voice still said to him to ‘come’ and, by instinct, he turned on the computer, who was in stand-by mode, trying to connect with anything out there. When the device began to work, he turned to the place where the dimensional holes would be and a bright green small mass of energy was there.
 
“What the heck is this?”
 
“Come…Lumière”
 
The bright energy pulsing there enticed his curiosity, as she stepped where the energy masses would be if there was a dimension bridge (as he like to say). He now knew the voices came from there.
 
“Touch it”
 
Lumière heard not once nor twice but many times the voice call him through that bright thing in front of him. Would him do it or not? He stared from a second before touching it with one of his fingers. Then, he felt like a shot of energy go through his skin and body.
 
“What the fuck?”
 
He looked at his hand and it seemed it was harmless to him, He tried it once again, then other time.  Until he found out he had to go all in. And so what he did…
 
Next, another voice could be heard…
 
“Lumière… Lumière…”
 
When he woke up, he found out he wasn’t at his laboratory. Or Kansas. Or whatever place he knew. Actually all what he saw was white. Did he die? And what was that voice he began to hear, a god-like voice, louder and imposing as any deity is. 
 
“Welcome, Lumière. We’ve been expecting you…”
 
“What… where I am? Am I dead?”
 
“Nope. You are very much alive, Lumière”
 
“How do you know my name? And where I am?”
 
“You are where you deserve to be all this time”
 
“Excuse me?”
 
Next… he found himself at a white room, with a white armchair. Everything was so white that it looked like some hospital zone.
 
“Sit down. We need to talk…”
 
 
THE END (of this episode)
 
 