Except not really. Because my mom is probably tucking Abuela’s quilt around my shriveled body right now. Whoever is controlling my mom’s character inside this stupid fake world is worried because I deviated from the norm. Because my consciousness isn’t as easy to control as a string of code.
The text messages are all from fake Mom, too. Except one. The most recent one is from Dr. Spencer.
Please come to see me ASAP.
I shove my hand against the steering wheel, and the horn lets out a low-pitched moan like a cow drowning in quicksand. A flock of birds flies up from the elm tree and flash against the overly blue sky. If only life were that easy, and I could just fly up and away from the crap happening down here in VR world. Except those birds aren’t real either. Just a well-done simulation.
I could run away and ignore the messages, but it wouldn’t change anything. Somewhere in another reality, my body is dying, and eventually I’ll go with it and become another lost piece in the game. Can I live like that? Never being able to talk to my mom again? Not touch her or feel her tiny arms wrap around me? The other ghosts would be there, but that’s really just being alone together. An eternity stuck with the same strangers, just existing in a world that’s forgotten all about us.
Was that better than the alternative?
Only one way to find out. We all have a role to play in the game.
I put the truck into gear and head out of the park, cutting through several lanes of traffic for the short drive back to VALR headquarters. Not a single horn sounds. The other cars on the road all shift in quick bursts of movement to avoid hitting me. Some quick coding work by whoever is in charge of the traffic simulation. I hope I made the morning a little more interesting for them.
I pull into the parking lot and don’t bother to find a spot. What’s the point when none of this is real? I park my truck right in front of the door under a big NO PARKING sign and hop out. What are they going to do? Tow my virtual truck to a virtual impound lot?
The same guard who is always at the front desk moves around to intercept me the minute I walk through the door. “Viviana, Dr. Spencer would like to…”
Without even a tiny acknowledgement, I march past him straight to the elevator. I’m done playing the stupid conversation game with some faceless programmer.
When the elevator stops on the fourth floor, I stride down the hall and push into Dr. Spencer’s office without knocking.
“Viv, thank goodness.” Dr. Spencer jumps out of her chair and rushes over to me as I sink down into one of her oversized arm chairs. “We were so worried about you. Your mother called frantic when you didn’t come home last night and—”
“Any way we can cut the bullshit?” My voice is hollow and monotone.
I look up into her shocked face and relish the moment. In a shitastic situation, I gotta get my jollies wherever I can.
Dr. Spencer sits in her chair opposite mine and stares at me in perfect stillness for a solid thirty seconds. I can just imagine whoever is controlling her trying to figure out what to say. “What bullshit are we cutting, Viv?”
I open my mouth and laugh. A good old fashioned belly shaking laugh, like the one I shared with my mom right before they gave me the drugs that brought me here. When the world was still real. Awful and painful and real. I laugh until tears are streaming down my face and my empty stomach hurts.
“Thank you. I really needed that.” I wipe away at the tears and face Dr. Spencer, still smiling. “Let’s stop pretending like all of this is real. Stop acting like my mom is at home right now worried sick that I didn’t come home last night. Hell, last night. How about the couple seconds of reset that we all pretend is a good night’s sleep? I know this is fake, you know this is fake. You know I know this is fake, and I’m exhausted from keeping the farce alive.”
Dr. Spencer sits back in her chair, her hands steepled in front of her, studying me with scrunched eyes and drawn brows. “Well, this is a first. We’ve never had a candidate openly admit to knowing the VR existed.” She stands up and ambles over to her desk, still talking in a calm, controlled voice. “Oh, we had plenty of candidates that we suspected had figured it out. Some that asked a lot of questions or got hung up on the tiny details. But no one ever openly confessed to knowing. They simply carried out the charade until their bodies gave out and the simulation ended.”
I sit back and watch her, my heart beating heavy in my chest. It’s not like her words are a surprise. I already knew this was fake, and I knew I wasn’t the first one. But I didn’t expect her to admit it. My gut expected her to deny the claims, try to explain away my doubts and worries with tales of how my brain was still adapting after the coma and it was natural to feel a disconnect with reality.
“Thirty days.” Dr. Spencer’s voice pulls me back out of my thoughts. “We discovered early on in the trials that thirty days was the longest anyone’s body would survive with the consciousness dragged to another reality. It didn’t matter how many drugs or physical treatments we used. After thirty days, the body simply gave up as if the soul was too tired to hold on to something that wasn’t there anymore. You are currently sitting at twenty-five days.”
I can’t hold back the gasp. Time has been hard to track since I got here but it doesn’t feel like it’s even been a week.
“Time moves differently inside the VR. It’s easier if we keep the time schedule flexible rather than trying to stick to a standard twenty-four hour day. The schedule follows the circadian rhythms of the candidate. When you are tired, the day ends and doesn’t begin again until your mind tells it to.”
She sits down and opens a folder on her desk. “At twenty-five days, your body has already begun the ultimate decline. It requires more effort from us to keep your systems from shutting down. The deepest part of your consciousness is aware of your impending death. That’s why the headaches have gotten worse. Why you might feel tired or ill. Your body is trying to tell your mind it’s time to let go at the same time your mind is convinced everything is okay.”
“Except it’s not.” I sit up straight in my chair and stare at her. “I know this isn’t real. I know my body is dying.”
Dr. Spencer chuckles, and the sound makes me want to slap her. “Even with all our years of study, the mind is still a mystery. You may know this isn’t real, but if I walked over and slapped you right now, you would still feel the sting. Even though you know your body, the one that actually feels pain, is tucked away in a room far away from here. At the same time your mind rejects this reality, it welcomes it as the only reality it has.”
A pounding erupts at my temples, and I squeeze my eyes against the pain, trying to convince myself that it’s not really there. It doesn’t work. “So now what?”
Dr. Spencer stands and walks calmly to the door. “I’d like to show you something.”
C>TWENTYONE.exe
I follow Dr. Spencer out of her office and down the hall to another room I’ve never been in. The door doesn’t have a label, but it looks like every other shut door on the hallway. Dr. Spencer swipes a keycard against the reader and it beeps at the same time a series of little lights flash green.
She pushes open the door and motions for me to enter first.
I stop less than a foot inside the room. The room is empty of any tables, chairs, or desks, but every wall is covered in giant monitors. The only exception is a computer station built into the far corner.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve shown a candidate this room. I’d almost given up hope that we’d get here.”
She points to the far wall where the monitor shows a giant server room. More rows than I can count of blinking lights showing each server running in order. “That’s the super computer. It takes a massive amount of power to generate the VR world you and I live in. As you can see, we’re nearly at capacity.”
“Is that why you’re developing the new OS and backing up everything off site?”
Dr. Spencer laughs, but it isn’t a real laugh. “We’ve bee
n developing a new OS for the past forty years.”
I glance back at her, and she lifts her eyebrows at me. Of course, the OS isn’t new. It’s me. Every controller is a possible new OS.
“Why did you let me work on it? Weren’t you afraid I’d figure it out?”
“Quite the contrary. We were hoping you would.” She crosses the room to stand in front of the screen filled with the massive computing system. “We’ve never had a candidate with an inclination for computing before. It was a theory among some of the team that your intimate knowledge of the system might aid you in grasping this new reality. It seems we were right.”
I nod my head. For some reason, it feels safer to let her think their plan worked than to tell her that Grant clued me in to what was really going on.
“This screen is our team of programmers.” She points at another monitor showing rows of cubicles much like the ones I sat at for my very fake internship. “These are the people in charge of making micro changes to the code that’s reflected in everything you see. Right there is…”
She trails off and points toward a glass box. Inside is a dark-haired woman wearing a green suit, like the ones they make actors wear for movies with computer simulation. I study the room and find several other glass boxes. No one is inside, but they are ready for whoever needs to interact with me next.
The dark-haired woman turns toward the camera and waves.
“That’s the programmer controlling me right now.” Dr. Spencer turns to look at me and smiles. “Hello.”
I suck in a deep breath and watch the coders all hunched over their monitors. It’s surreal to know that their fingers flying over the keys are impacting everything I can see, hear, and smell.
Dr. Spencer stands back and takes a minute to study me. I ignore her, my eyes watching every little detail inside the room where my world is made into reality.
“You’re handling this very well. Much better than the last candidates we brought in here.” Dr. Spencer comes to stand next to me, almost too close, but not quite touching. We stare at the monitor together. “Initially we thought we could bring candidates here to explain the VR. It’s essential for a candidate to understand the reality of the situation in order to integrate with the world.”
I open my mouth to ask what she means by integrate but decide against it. Better to let her talk and share while she’s still being forthcoming.
“Unfortunately, that plan backfired. The candidates couldn’t reconcile what they saw on the monitors with what they could touch and see in the VR. The dual realities were too much and each of them succumbed to a separation within a few hours.”
“Succumbed to separation?” I glance over at Dr. Spencer. “You mean they died.”
She nods. “Yes. They were all very close to the thirty day window. We thought to give them one last chance before the end. Instead, they simply stopped. After coming in and seeing what you’ve seen, they stopped responding to any stimuli, simply staring blankly at the monitors. After a half dozen attempts, we stopped bringing anyone in here.”
My mind races back to the park. “The Remnants.”
“What’s that?”
“I…” How much do I tell her? “At the park. I saw them. Those people you brought in here. They’re like a shadow, a ghost. They just stand there or walk slowly in a circle staring at nothing.”
“Interesting.” Dr. Spencer turns to me and studies my face with shrewd eyes. “Have you seen any other previous candidates?”
I shake my head and swallow the nausea building in my gut. “No, just them. They looked like something left over so I called them the Remnants.”
“I’m sure our key programmers will be interested to know. Of course, if they aren’t interacting with the system, they can’t impact the code. Best to just leave them alone.”
I nod, knowing that won’t be a problem. At least I know Adam was right and I don’t have to worry about turning into one of them.
“I want to show you one more thing.” She places her hands on my shoulders and turns me to face the wall holding the door we came in through.
I let out a low moan the instant I realize what I’m looking at. The tiny, sterile room on the screen is the last place I was really me. My body lies on the hospital style bed. I’m still wearing the same black t-shirt, but it drapes over me, swallowing my emaciated body. My head is almost completely bald except a thin strip of purple hair, which someone has carefully brushed over my forehead. Wires and tubes snake out of my skin-and-bone arms.
It’s so unlike how I last saw myself that I could almost imagine it’s someone else lying in the bed wasting away to nothing. Except who else has purple hair, an affinity for computer nerd humor, and my abuela’s brightly colored quilt?
I stare at the screen, and the door opens. My mother walks in, her mouth moving a mile a minute as she sets a fresh bouquet of flowers on the small table by my bed.
“Can I hear her?”
Instantly a speaker in the ceiling clicks on, and the room is filled with the voice that has been my rock for my whole life.
“And I told them I know lilies aren’t in season right now, but my beautiful daughter loves them, and she should have something beautiful to look at. The doctors don’t know if you can smell them, but if you can I hope you like them. I can promise you they smell amazing.”
I take a big breath through my nose, and I’m rewarded with the sweet smell of spring lilies. I don’t know if I’m smelling the flowers in the room with my body or if the programmers are working overtime to pump them into my reality. I don’t really care.
“Dr. Brooks tells me you are doing fantastic, though he and I might have a different definition of fantastic. But he said they are learning so much from you, and they’re going to be able to help so many people because of what you’re doing here. I know that would make you happy, mija. You’re making a difference in the world, and I couldn’t be prouder of you.”
She smooths down the blanket on my legs, and it’s hard not to wince at the bony sticks barely making a lump under the soft cotton.
“I need to head home now, but I promise I’ll be back tomorrow. Only a few more days now baby, but I promise I’ll be with you the whole way. I love you, mija.”
I watch her bend down and kiss my papery cheek. I wipe away the tears spilling over my eyes as she wipes away tears of her own.
My throat aches with the cries I can’t let out.
Dr. Spencer’s voice is whisper soft behind me. “It’s time, Viv. Whenever you’re ready, we can complete the integration.”
I keep my eyes on my mother leaving my physical body behind as I answer her. “What does that mean?”
“You can be the candidate to finally make this VR more than just a coder’s playground. Your mind is so ready. Ready to accept that your body is done, but your awareness can be so much more. You can integrate with the program and make this your new reality. One in which you make the rules.”
“I…” I can’t take my eyes off the room with my body being kept alive by a hoard of machines.
“Take some time. Go home, go to the park. Go wherever you need to think this through. But don’t take too long.” Dr. Spencer nods toward my nearly depleted human body and opens the door.
C:>TWENTYTWO.exe
I drive back to the park. The thought of going home and talking to the programmer pretending to be my mother is more than I can handle at the moment. I park the truck under the same elm tree and get out, not sure where I’m going.
The sun is past noon, though it feels like I woke up only an hour ago. My brain is tired though…too many concepts vying for attention. I head down a path that winds through the park and put my feet on auto-pilot.
Dr. Spencer makes it all seem so easy. Just decide I’m ready to assimilate and it’s done. My body back in that room in another reality will stop, and everything here will go on as it is. I’ll be able to interact with everyone, but not really. Mama will still be here, except it wouldn’t be her. It would b
e some computer simulation of her and a faceless coder typing in pre-approved phrases meant to make me feel like this is all real.
But if I don’t assimilate…
They’ll get another controller; Dr. Spencer called them candidates. Either way, they’ll be the one running the show, and I’ll be like Grant and Adam. There, but only existing just below the surface, not even able to interact with the coders.
Or I shut it all down. It’s an option I can’t take off the table yet. I was never supposed to survive the coma. I made my peace with it, said my goodbyes, and let my life as it was stand on its own. If I can find the coding behind the VR, I could figure out a way to wipe it out. They’ve been building this world for forty years. Taking the system down wouldn’t stop them for good, but maybe someone would come up with a real AI before they got it back up and running. And then we’d all be free. Except, Grant seems to be the only one hell-bent on being free. And maybe the Remnants, if they had the ability to say anything. No way would I want to exist like that.
“Viv?”
I spin around and there’s Grant, backlit by the setting sun. With everything that’s happened in the last day, I’m not sure if I’m even mad at him anymore. No matter how any of us got here, we’re all just part of Dr. Brooks’ show, whether we want to be or not. But the sting of his lie still hits me in the chest.
“Not tonight, Grant.”
He holds his hands up in a show of surrender. “I didn’t come to fight or even to convince you of anything. I just want to apologize.”
It seems so unnecessary given just how unreal all of this is, but I want to hear his words. Or I don’t. I don’t know anymore.
“Go on then.” I cross my arms over my chest and wait.
Grant drops his hands. “You’re right, and you have every right to be mad at me. To be honest, I’m mad at me. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret driving into that tree.”
I’m not sure what I expected him to say, but that certainly wasn’t it.
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