by Huss, JA
Wishing for him won’t make him appear. But I did make all this with him in mind.
He’s very good at virtual world-building. And when he finally does come back I want him to be proud of what I’ve done.
My days are leisurely in a way they weren’t in the world he made for me. Tray was going for reality. I get it. He wanted me to be comfortable and feel like I was part of a community. It didn’t work. I was the only real person there and I always knew it.
And that made it more fake.
Here… I feel real.
I get up in the morning and swim in the ocean. Then I lie in the sun and doze. Then I’ll usually create something. A new species of bird, or lizard, or fruit tree.
I made clothes for a while but I stopped that a long time ago.
Why cover my beautiful body when there’s no one here to see it?
The sun moves across the sky much the same way it did in that other place. And at night stars appear. I spent a lot of time on my stars. They make perfectly visible constellations in the dark night sky.
This is better than Tray’s Utopia because now it’s Brigit’s Paradise.
It’s midafternoon and I’m lying on the sand soaking up the warm rays of my sun, just listening to the sound of the softly crashing waves when a shadow blocks the light.
I don’t notice it for a moment. There’s a second or two when my mind processes this as normal. Then I realize I didn’t make a cloud in the sky.
And when I open my eyes, shielding them from the glare of my sun, there is a man standing in front of me.
A man who is not Tray.
We stare at each other for a few moments. He’s naked, like me. Because my world has no clothes. And I know he’s an Akeelian because he has two cocks, both of which are semi-hard.
“Brigit?” he says, squinting down at me.
I sit up and prop my hands behind me, digging them into the sand. “I am Brigit.”
“I’m Valor. Tray’s brother.”
The heart I created in my chest beats rapidly and I get to my feet.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Valor says. “Tray sent me in first because I wanted to see it. He’s coming soon. To pull you out, Brigit. We have you. You’re safe. He’s going to pull you out but he wanted to talk to you first so you didn’t get confused.”
I think about this for a moment.
In fact, I have thought about this moment for lifetimes, it seems. I dreamed about it. When it would happen, what it would look like… how happy I would be.
And somehow it didn’t quite prepare me for the reality of the actual occurrence.
“Say something,” he says. “Did you understand me? I’m Valor. Tray’s brother. We’re pulling you out.”
It’s been so long since I talked out loud, there’s a slight panic rising inside me because I fear that I forgot how.
But then the words form in my head and come out my mouth. “Hello.”
“Hello,” he says, taking a step closer. He was backlit by the sun, but that one step takes the glare away and I see his brilliant violet eyes as they pass up and down my naked body. “It’s… nice to meet you. Finally. Tray’s told me so much about you.”
“Funny,” I say. “He’s never mentioned you.”
“No?” Valor laughs. “Well, we weren’t real close until recently. And actually, it was recently that he finally told me what was going on in here. Just yesterday in our time.”
I peek my head to the side to see behind him, hoping that Tray will appear.
“It’s gonna take a while, he said. He had to send me in first. But he’s coming. He told me to tell you that he loves you and he’ll see you soon. And not to worry.”
“OK,” I say.
I’m not sure I believe him.
“He told me to describe outside too. We’re on a ship, Brigit. Umm… you were in a cryopod. We pulled it in and now you’re in our medical bay. Asleep.”
“What is the year?” I ask. “Outside? Did I look young? Or am I an old woman now?”
“You’re not old,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re very…” His eyes dart over my naked body again, taking it in more thoroughly.
I let him do that. It’s been a very long time since a man looked at my body.
“You’re very beautiful,” he finishes. “In the real. But we don’t have a firm grasp on the time because you weren’t near a gravity well to pull a time from.” He smiles and shrugs his shoulders. “I’m just repeating what he told me. I barely know what that means.”
I take in his body too. It’s very difficult not to notice his… man-ness. Broad shoulders thick with muscle. Taller than me. Blond hair. Those violet eyes, of course.
He’s different than Tray, but there’s something familiar about him too.
I think about that for a moment. Something triggering in my mind. Something about—
“Hey, uh… so this isn’t what Tray described to me. He said there was a community building, and people, and—”
“I broke that world,” I explain. “And had to make a new one.”
“Shit,” Valor says. He turns and looks around. “Shit. Tray says he would appear there. Will he be able to get here?”
I smile. “He’s Tray.”
“Right, but—”
“Don’t worry. He’s… Tray.”
“Right.” He chuckles.
And it’s in this exact moment that I realize… I have been lonely. I have missed people. And he’s real. He’s really real. Not some fabricated illusion of real. He lives out there. And now he’s in here.
Alone. With me.
I have a sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to touch him. To feel him. To caress the realness of his body. I want to talk to him. I want to fight with him. I want to experience every single emotion with him. All the good, and bad, and ugly, and beautiful human emotions I’ve been missing for God only knows how long.
“So what do we do now? Are you going to take me somewhere?”
He looks around, squints his eyes a little. “No. I don’t have anywhere to take you. We’re just supposed to wait.”
That makes me feel a little better for some reason.
One last waiting period. Only now I know the truth. I know where Tray is. He’s standing over my body right now in the real world. He’s thinking about me. He’s planning my rescue. And soon—even though I have no idea what soon means—soon, we will be together again.
“He told me to keep you happy,” Valor says. “He told me to make sure you know he loves you. And he said it’s going to feel like a long time before he gets here, but right now, in this very moment on the other side, he’s on his way in, Brigit.”
I nod my head and feel wetness on my cheeks. I’m crying.
“Please,” Valor says, taking another step towards me. “Don’t cry. It’s almost over.” His arms wrap around me and then all my desires come true.
I feel him. His touch floods my body with all the emotions I’ve had bottled up.
And I just cry.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - TRAY
It’s been a long time since I had strong feelings. When I was young, before my father changed me, I had a lot of feelings. Too many. Feelings of panic and fear. Feelings of hopelessness and despair. Anxiety so bad sometimes I withdrew into myself for days at a time. Unwilling or maybe unable to find my way back to the real world.
And that was before I knew about virtual reality.
So I don’t hate my father for what he did to me. After he pulled me out of medical he told me that yes, he’d done it because he was told to. But he’d also done it to help me.
Help me deal with the emotions that flooded my brain and made me unable to relate to others. He had hoped it would be a coping mechanism. Something that would temper the neurochemicals that unbalanced me.
I asked him about that first part. Who told him to do this to me? Who was pulling the strings? But he just said, “Later, Tray. I’ll explain later. Right now I just want you to get used to your new sel
f. Try new things. See what you can do now. Talk to people. Because I think you’ll be surprised to learn that life isn’t so overwhelming anymore.”
He was right. Life was much easier. I could feel the difference the moment I woke up from the procedure. There was something else inside me now. But it was still me.
ALCOR asked me a lot of questions about this procedure when we first arrived. What did it feel like? Was it like a parasite? Did it feel… other?
It didn’t. It felt like me, only better. More in control. Equipped to deal. Like there’s a control panel somewhere that governs all my responses and someone adjusted it. Just a little, just enough, so that everything made sense and nothing was overwhelming.
When I came out of medical Jimmy saw me first. There were other kids on Wayward Station. More than just the seven of us who left under Corla’s direction. And unlike Crux, who was tutored privately and his friends were restricted, I went to school with all of them. I had one class with Jimmy. It was a human relations class and it involved a lot of group discussion, which, before my change, was very difficult for me. We sat in small intimate circles and talked about ethics and cultures.
I never really understood why I was in that class because I was several years younger than everyone else. I never fit in. And besides, my job was always going to be network interfacing. Even if I didn’t have the upgrade. My future was in artificial intelligence just like my father. Just like Jimmy’s future was diplomatic relations because that’s what his father did.
And it was hard for me. Everything was hard for me in the years before my change.
Then after… it wasn’t.
The emotions were gone. Just… gone. There was nothing there. I didn’t care what people thought, I didn’t care about feelings, I didn’t care about ethics or perspective. I just didn’t care.
In this group discussion where Jimmy was the oldest, and thus the leader by default, our talk always devolved into all things teenager. I was a teenager, but there were no girls on my mind. I didn’t want to drink in the dining room the way Jimmy and Crux did. I didn’t want access to X Level so I could fuck sexbots.
But Jimmy did. He and the other boys talked about it one day in class. And in my mind I was accessing it, just purely out of boredom. Just to see what was down there. And when the class was over I don’t know what came over me. But I walked up to Jimmy—who I had never really talked to in any meaningful way before this moment—and I said, “I can get you in to X Level if you want.”
Of course he said yes. And I did get him in. And I can only assume he had a good time because after that he said hi to me in the hallway. He smiled at me.
We were friends.
My first friend. Jimmy was my first friend.
Thinking back on that now, I find it sad.
Because I didn’t understand that he was just using me.
The same day that Crux was breeding with Corla I was in the middle of another upgrade. Not one that involved a cryopod. Just a simple one. Just a few lines of code in the form of nanobots injected into my bloodstream my father said were necessary to ‘even things out’.
I didn’t know what that meant back then because everything felt pretty fucking even as far as I was concerned. But just a few hours later I would understand.
It was a processing power upgrade that allowed me to override the nearby spin node gate and this is how we got Corla through it.
I never saw my father again after that last trip to medical. He never gave me any directions. He never said, “Son, this is your path. Just keep going.”
So I never knew for sure that he was in on it. That he was helping us.
But I think he was. And I think he’s dead now because of it.
I have so many feelings about that.
During our escape from Akeelian System I didn’t have time to think about this stuff. And once we got to ALCOR Station I was busy getting him online. So it was about a year before I actually had time to think that whole night through. That’s when the emotions came back. That’s when I figured it out.
My father sent us on that mission. He got me out. He got my friends out. He saved us. And he paid for it with his life.
It overwhelmed me at first.
Guilt, mostly.
Sadness. The despair was back. The depression. The realization of what happened and what it all meant.
ALCOR and I were close back then. My daily grind was all about him. And I did everything he asked like I was born to do it. He would ask a question and answers would just come spilling out of my mouth fully formed. I would say things I didn’t even understand. I was on autopilot.
That’s when the new thing inside me became a parasite. Long after ALCOR stopped asking me that question.
I think he knew. I think he had always known that I would eventually feel that way about the new me. Because one day I would wake up and Old Tray would be completely gone. Nothing left of that scared kid. And New Tray would be the only thing left.
This was when he told me about the Pleasure Prison. It was a distraction, I realize. Just a way to make me feel better. Give me another purpose.
He said it was left over from the inhabitants who used to live on the station. Which was not a lie. He just failed to mention the specifics behind the lie.
I figured that out on my own after many, many years of building the Pleasure Prison. And that tight bond that ALCOR and I formed in the early days when New Tray was just a shell of a being started to fade. He was busy with Crux by then, trying to convince him that what we were doing was good. That this was all going to be OK. Because Crux was always his moral compass. That was what ALCOR called him in private. Not to Crux’s face, because that would just set him off on a quest to find out why ALCOR needed a moral compass in the first place.
I don’t know how Brigit got into my Pleasure Prison. It could’ve been ALCOR. But I don’t think so. I don’t think ALCOR knew about Brigit. I hid her so very, very well.
And like I said, I didn’t really have time to think about all this stuff back then. My life after the escape was just one long task list.
I like task lists. They keep my mind busy in a way that’s satisfying.
But I have time to think about it now because I’m inside the portable version of Brigit’s virtual and there’s nothing here.
It’s gone. Just smoky-gray clouds of ether code.
Normally I would wake up in our bedroom and Brigit would be somewhere close by. Not there, with me. She never knew when I would wake up again so she just went on with her life until I found her. At work, or outside somewhere, whatever.
Old Tray would panic about my current situation. Old Tray would have emotions flooding through his bloodstream telling him to be afraid. Or be sad. Or feel hopeless.
But Old Tray is long gone.
Maybe he never really existed?
So I don’t panic. I know what this is. I can guess what happened.
Her world was disrupted in such a way that she annihilated it.
But she’s here. She has to be here. If she were still on Harem I’d worry that something truly went wrong. That someone got in to the Pleasure Prison the way she did and stole her.
But this isn’t the real Pleasure Prison. It’s a copy.
Ironic, right? Copies of copies of copies.
It’s the real version of Brigit. At least the only one I’ve ever known.
So I just wander. Drift around, kinda searching, but not really. I know I’ll find them eventually. Time is on my side.
And I think about all these things I’ve been putting on hold since our escape.
I think about Jimmy and how he used me.
I think about ALCOR and how he used me too.
I think about Crux, and Luck, and Serpint and how I never really knew them. More my fault than theirs. Because they never needed me and I didn’t need them either.
I think about Valor. I think about him and Luck all these years. Their secret romance. Bromance. Whatever.
I think about how Valor chose me over Luck once Nyleena came along. How he needs me.
And I’d be stupid not to wonder if he was just using me too. To get to Veila.
But for some reason I don’t let those feelings take hold with Valor. Maybe it’s because I need him too?
And just when I come to this realization there’s a point of light in the distance. A gold light that gets bigger like I’m approaching it, but in reality—or at least virtual reality—it’s approaching me.
It’s not Brigit. I know this immediately.
But the last person I expect to see inside my copy of Pleasure Prison is Draden.
He forms in front of me slowly. Taking his time like… maybe he thinks I need this time to get used to the idea.
I don’t. I’m New Tray. And in a way, when I think about it as I watch his body pull itself together, I think I did expect this. I think I knew that Draden was never dead. I think I knew that ALCOR killed him back when he was thirteen and he fell off a lift bot and then brought him back to life.
I think I knew that he was like me.
A machine.
Neither of us smile. We just stare at each other. Draden and his dark blond hair. His violet eyes that were the brightest of all of ours. Practically pink in color. I think that was why everyone loved him so much. Those violet-pink eyes could mesmerize you. They kept him child-like in a way. Innocent. And he was innocent, wasn’t he? He didn’t ask for this any more than I did.
“You don’t think it’s me, do you?”
He says this in a way that confuses me for a moment. You don’t think it’s me as in… I cannot believe it’s him? Or You don’t think it’s me as in… Do you think I’m doing this?
“It’s you,” I say. “It’s been you all this time.” But I’m not even sure what I mean by that.
He sucks in a deep breath of air and when I look down at myself I am Tray again. Not a gray cloud of code. And the world around us begins to form and we’re back in Brigit’s virtual world. The one I created for her. Only it’s empty now.
We’re standing on the grass near the community garden. The sun is shining hot directly overhead like it’s midday.