Category: Short Story

A soft chime, nothing more than a breath really, crossed his sense of awareness. Just the lightest touch of memory of his life before was rising up within in response. A yearning need to explain everything. A desire to find a way to say everything that was left unsaid until now.

The Vox on soft ground pinged again, and then followed with its typical voices-within-a-voice, but far more artificial than a natural speaker.

“VOICE ENCODING READY, TRANSMISSION STANDBY
PLEASE RECORD YOUR MESSAGE
TOUCH ENCODE CRYSTAL TO TRANSMIT
PROCEED.”

Chase sat there, thinking it through. He wiped his hands on his pant legs, and cleared his throat.

“Hey. This is Chase,” he said. Chase paused and thought about the face of his… “Hi Mom.”

Another pause. He wiped absentmindedly at his brow, scratching at his hairline.

“I am not sure you will recognize my voice. But its me. Your son. Sorry I kind of just disappeared on you all like that. I know you probably think I am dead. Well surprise, I’m not. Tell everyone that I miss them. I would make a list, but I need to focus. I was told it has been four years for me now? But that is more like eight years for all of you. That is what Sarah explained to me.”

Chase took a deep breath, letting it pass his teeth slowly. He cleared his throat again.

“Uh… Where do I start? I… I am the first? I am the first. At least that is what I was told the first time I met Sarah. Right now you may be thinking I am talking about losing my virginity or something crass like that, but that is not what this is all about. This is about the Hylx. And this is about us.”

Another deep breath. He did not want to ramble.

“I was mad at you guys when I left that night. Now I know that I was thirteen going on full blown adult, and I thought that I knew everything. I thought that I knew what life is, I thought I had it all figured out. But I was wrong. I am sorry for leaving you all. Especially that way. That was no way to treat you or Kevin. I am sorry about all of it. But! I am not sorry about what happened to me. I would never take that back. Me being a jerk and running off that night lead to all of this other stuff… and without that I would not have this, so…”

He rambled anyway.

“How do I explain this? Can I explain this?”

A soft hand laid on his shoulder, and without looking, Chase laid his own hand over the top, feeling the warmth of Sarah’s hand spread through his own.

“I ran off into the woods. I was angry with you and Kevin. I can’t even remember about what. Something stupid, like you forcing me to do my homework over because I scored below a B. I remember how strict you were, and I was fed up. Kevin was trying to preach about listening to my mom, she had my best interests at heart, blah, blah, blah. I did not want to hear it. Plus, to be honest, I did not like Kevin. I am not sure if you are still married or anything, hopefully you are happy. Hopefully…”

A reassuring squeeze from Sarah. Chase sighed again.

“It doesn’t matter. But I ran off. I got lost in the woods. I fell down that stupid ravine you always warned me about and really hit my head. I probably would have died that night of exposure since I was so hurt. I mean I did not even have my jacket. But Sarah saved me. The Hylx are a lot like us. They knew that I was hurt, and they needed someone to study. As they would say, it was a fortunate circumstance. I was the first. Not the only… but the first. So they made the call.”

Chase looked up at the purple fronds far overhead, stretching for meters far above, shielding the orange light of the two suns. Only Maka was up, Nera would be coming in about two hands. He had time to really think this through.

“I know now that they saved me. Whatever brain injury I had, their medics saved me. And I met Sarah. She was the first thing that I saw when I woke up. She was the first Hylx that talked to me and helped me regain my memory and all the other things that come with an injury like that. It was a hard time, learning to walk again, and to speak, but it came back. It all came back. And Sarah was with me through all of it. She is here with me, say hello to my mom, Sarah.”

Voices-within-a-voice sounded, overlaid with context and emotion and thought. The voice was as soft as her touch.

“Glad to introduce
mother of Chase
kindness extended
respect and love.”

Chase grinned. “I am not sure how that will sound over a speaker, but hopefully you get the gist. Its different in person. You can hear all of it. I don’t know why, but its all there. So much I don’t understand, and that is the reason I stayed. I need you to know that I did not run away. I wanted to come back. But at the same time, I wanted to understand. I wanted to understand who they were. I wanted to know Sarah like she knew me. So first of all, I guess I can start there. Sarah is not her real name. It is something else…”

“Seraphina
ixialiiale
seraahaime
shixisiina.”

“Yeah that. Thanks Sarah. I couldn’t hear the other parts when I woke up the first time. I could only hear Seraphina. And it stuck. She did not appreciate it at first, but that changed when she started to interact with me. In our un-nurtured state, we are like children to them. They think so much faster than us, and are able to work things out. She has kind of been my mom away from home. She has done a great job too. You should know that Sarah takes great care of me. She has encouraged me to learn and exercise, she helps care for me. She has pushed me to think like the Hylx, and while I am not as fast as them, they value what I have to offer. They say that we all have this potential. That we can grow, like children to adults. Which is funny because they have like double the amount of life stages than a human. They are really shortening the metaphor.”

Chase laughed softly.

“The Hylx almost look like monkeys. Imagine blue monkeys with over-sized eyes and hands, and they can move fast, like a hummingbird. But they are not stable physically like a human… they shift. They waver like they are in heat waves on a far off horizon. Something about quantum phase shifting that I don’t understand yet. Their species evolved in a very dangerous world, and they evolved to manipulate energy states. It makes them look like they are moving, even when they are standing perfectly still. Sarah tells me that is why they are so smart. They leverage energy use in so many different ways, their brains are always working faster than a physical body would permit. So much I don’t understand… yet.”

“You will
you will
you will
you will.”

“You probably heard that. That is called an alignment statement. Hylx can make their states superimpose to get a point across. For the first few weeks, that is all Sarah did to communicate with me. She really took her time to help me. You would like her mom. So don’t be mad, ok? Sarah took care of me. She saved me.”

Chase ran his hand through his hair, feeling the pull of a few knots at the ends of his long locks.

“You should see me. I haven’t cut my hair since I arrived. It is so long.”

“Tell your mother
about the comings
and the goings
and the warnings.”

“Earth is dying. The Hylx know because they have been studying us for millennia. They watched the human race rise up, and they knew we needed to be nurtured from nearly the beginning. All the killing, mom. They cry for us. They sing for us. They pray for us. We are so much better than what we think we are. We are amazing creatures and we cannot see past our small little slices of experience of reality. The Hylx have been planning on changing that for the last thousand years. As I said, I was the first.”

A cough again, clearing his throat.

“The Hylx have predicted that Earth will no longer support human life in about one hundred years. They say that everything that is being done now is too little, too late, to use the sentiment. They admire the human spirit, and they hope that it will serve us well in the days to come. They have established gates all over the Earth. Only one person can walk through at a time. The gates connect to other worlds. Each gate on Earth is one way. And each gate leads to a planet with another nexus of gates.”

“A gift
a gift
a gift
a threat.”

“Sarah tells me that this is a gift for the human race, but the humans have to comply with their demands. And that is the reason I am sending this message. You and Kevin, and everyone else that you care about needs to follow the instructions. Find a gate, and find a Hylx for nurturing. Otherwise, you will die alone on a planet that has given up. And then the Hylx will be terraforming it to make is habitable again. They estimate roughly three and half thousand years to make it healthy.”

“The gates will gain lots of attention. When they are turned on, you will see the world light up with alarms and warnings and militaries thinking they are doing the right thing. But messages like mine are going to be broadcast around the world. They have been nurturing thousands of us.”

Chase took a deep breath, focusing his thoughts on the potential of his voices.

“I was the first
not the only.”

He reached out and touched Vox crystal without any hesitation. Sarah laughed with joy and hugged his shoulders, her long blue arm crossing his chest.

“MESSAGE ENCODED
TRANSMISSION SENT
VOX ONLINE.”

“Are you afraid that you will never know success?”

“What kind of question is that?” An eyebrow was raised.

A demurring wave of a hand that glittered faintly as if it was made of light. “Its a good question. I ask it often.”

“It is not a good question,” he groused.

“It is, if it does the job.”

Silence.

“So are you?”

More silence.

“I can’t help you if you don’t answer my questions.”

A gruff “Yes.”

“Yes what? To answering my questions or answering the question?”

“Both,” he replied. The eyebrow slowly lowered to join its partner again, and the man’s face was once again passive.

“How do you define success?” The female voice faded away at the end of the sentence, leaving the heavy implications of the word itself hang in the air like a cloud.

“I don’t know.”

“You must have an idea.”

“I used to think it was an impossible ideal to be strove for. I used to think it was money and material success. Now though, after everything… I don’t know what it is. I don’t need peers to tell me that I am success. I don’t need the validation.”

“So accolades are not for you?”

“No. I don’t need that. I have never needing anything like that.”

“What do you need then, Mr. Davies?”

“I need friends.”

“And you do not have friends?” The Therapist replied calmly.

He swallowed heavily. “At this moment, you are the closest thing to a friend that I have.”

“As a virtual construct, I consider that to be supremely unhealthy.”

“As a human, I feel the same. Trust me.” Mr. Davies turned his head to look at this virtual therapist. She had been designed to feel both maternal and sexually attractive at the same time, pulling at either end of the empathy spectrum of her patients. It was slightly uncomfortable either way to be honest. “I am a hermit. A very rich hermit, but a hermit nonetheless. I am crippled by my fears of the outside world… what would you suggest?”

The virtual therapist, virtually seated in a real world chair, lowered her virtual pen to the virtual paper in her lap and scribbled some notes. “Have you thought about consciousness transfer?”

“Just moving my consciousness from this body to another is not going to fix the headspace problems. I will take those anywhere ‘I’ go.”

“No doubt. But a new face, and a new body, might provide you a sense of difference that makes it all worthwhile. Think of it as living in someone else’s skin. It could be liberating.”

“Or crushing.”

The virtual therapist scribbled her virtual notes.

“I think it is funny that your programmers made you appear to interact with a something as archaic as paper, when I know you are just storing this information in a program sector somewhere.” Mr. Davies shook his head slowly.

“It is comforting,” the virtual therapist nodded solemnly. “I was designed to provide the greatest amount of comfort to the patients that I serve.  And I was not programmed.  I am a fully licensed AI therapist, and as you know, I am one of the best.”

Mr. Davies kept his mouth shut.

The Therapist continued, “Try it. One day. I can arrange it right now.”

“Right now?”

“Its only your consciousness. It is not as if we are moving an AI around.” The Therapist admonished lightly.

“Its my consciousness!” Mr. Davies burst.

“It is. You can think about it.”

“I would hope so.”

“I lied. Your mind is currently in transfer. Using your retainer, I have secured the necessary permits.”

“What?!”

“I said I lied. AIs can lie. Surprise. Your transfer should be done it 3… 2… 1…”

“You meddlesome…” Mr. Davies started. He finished a moment later… “Bitch!”

“I am sorry, ma’am?” The waitress standing in front of Mr. Davies was looking very confused. She continued, “Ma’am? You were ordering something?”

Mr. Davies took a second and looked around. He was sitting in an open air cafe, somewhere sunny, vaguely European. The windows on the street fronts had small awnings in a myriad array of colors, and the tables around him were small circular things nestled lightly on old cobblestones.

“Um… Americano please?”

The waitress nodded with a slight smile and moved on. Mr. Davies tentatively reached up to his chest and had the strangest sensation as he felt breasts that were connected to his own body.

“Holy shit.”

A man leaned into Mr. Davies field of view. “Pardon the interruption, but did you just say holy shit?”

“Uh, holy shit?”

“I thought so.” The young man smiled widely, showing his impressively handsome teeth in the process. He pointed at the spired building over his shoulder. “Not the best thing to say in front of a cathedral. God may over hear.”

Mr. Davies felt a wave of terror… or was it a wave of admiration? Did he just feel smitten? He felt his lip start to curl involuntarily at the thought.

“You from around here?” The man continued. His eyelashes were very long, framing his eyes strangely. The man was very attractive in every way that Mr. Davies could tell. Which was a huge problem for a heterosexual fifty five year old man that had never questioned his sexuality.

“I… uh… no thanks?”

“Well, if you change your mind, let me know,” the man winked. “And watch the blasphemy.”

Mr. Davies pulled the purse that was sitting on the table closer, rummaging through it, looking for a mirror or something. He felt his delicate (delicate?) fingers close on a compact. Pulling it open, he found himself looking into the eyes of a beautiful twenty something which also happened to be a very luxurious brunette. The phone in the purse started to ring, and Mr. Davies answered it hesitantly.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Davies. This is Mary from De2our, the agency that manages Vivian. I am just calling to remind you of the terms of your rental. You may not damage, or otherwise harm the body, including excessive eating or drinking, may not engage in dangerous or illicit behaviors, and you may not have any sexual relations. You are currently limited to a Tourist license, and must only stay in public places while touring the city you are located in. Your license will expire at nine p.m. local this evening and you will be transferred back to your origin point. If you understand these terms and conditions, please reply yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Confirmed. If you have any issues, please press the panic button on the armband located on your right wrist, and likewise, use the same armband for any purchases while you are on license and they will be charged back to your account. If you press the panic button, we will attempt to contact you via Vivian’s phone first. Do you have any questions?”

“No?” Mr. Davies replied.

“Great! It looks like Vivian is currently in Naples, so you should have a great day! Have fun and thank you for using De2our. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” He parroted into the silent line. Mary had already hung up.

He put the phone back into Vivian’s purse, along with the compact, and zipped it shut. He slung the strap over her head, and felt it settle unnaturally between what were temporarily his own foreign breasts. Mr. Davies adjusted it gently, pressed his armband against the Cafe table’s payment processor, waited for the beep.

“Your Americano… to go?” The waitress returned.

“If you could.”

“Sure. Are you ok?” The waitress’s eye traveled quickly over to the handsome man at the next table, and she lowered her voice. “Is that one bothering you?”

“No, no. Just want to get going.”

The waitress heaved a sigh and smiled. “No problem. Let me put this in a to-go cup for you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mr. Davies who was Vivian, noticed that the handsome man went very still and dropped his coffee cup on the ground, where it shattered spectacularly. After a moment, the man leaned over and started picking up the pieces.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“You shouldn’t curse,” Mr. Davies teased in his strange voice.

The handsome man turned his head, and looked Vivian up and down without any recognition in his eyes. “Sorry, I was startled. Where am I?”

“Apparently Naples,” Mr. Davies replied.

The waitress returned with his/her Americano in a to go cup and noticed the broken cup at the handsome man’s table. The waitress handed the Americano over, and with a sigh and went to pick up the pieces. As Mr. Davies started to walk away from the Cafe, she heard the man’s phone start to ring, and cut off sharply.

“Yes,” the man said, then after another moment he repeated the same. “Yes, why am I in a man’s body?”

Mr. Davies stopped short and turned around. The handsome man was nodding, and then smiled. “It is Naples. Thank you. And goodbye to you as well.”

The handsome one stood carefully, and bumped his wrist against the payment processor.

Mr. Davies-who-was-also-Vivian walked back. “Tourist license?”

The handsome one smiled. “Yes. I have the whole day in Naples! This is great!”

“First time?” Mr. Davies replied.

“Yes,” the handsome man slid his phone into his pocket. “Are you on a license as well?”

“I am.”

The handsome man held out his hand. “My name is Grace.”

“Russell.” Mr. Davies replied, shaking the proffered large hand with his dainty own.

“What? Ha! Well aren’t we the pair. Two Tourists that are all mixed up. I am going to give that Therapist AI a severe tongue lashing when I get back to Texas.”

Mr. Davies laughed, and surprised himself when his laugh came out in a different way, which made him laugh some more in spite of himself.

“What is so funny, Russell?” The handsome man that was Grace tilted her head slightly in confusion.

“Well, this may sound absurd, but I think you and I were just setup on a blind date.”

“Let me guess, you are lonely because you think you are crazy, so you have cut yourself off from the world?” Grace asked with a grin.

“Got it in one.” Russell admitted. “Or maybe a one and a half.”

“Well that makes perfect sense. Us crazy people have to keep it unique. Come on! If you and I are on a date, lets make the most of it… that way when we get back to ourselves, we can tell that AI to stick it in its ear.”

“If we have fun won’t that just make the Therapist think it got things right?” Russell asked.

“Well if it does, it does. Either way, we are here, our crazy is contained, and we can enjoy a glorious Italian spring day. Shall we?” Grace that was the handsome man put her arm out with a chivalrous half bow, and simultaneously winked at Russell.

Something felt light in his chest.  Something unidentifiable, like he was holding a bird gently in his hands.  With a shrug he put his hand in the crook of Grace’s arm, and they walked slowly onward towards the Square watching the pigeons wheel over head.

“Name?” The man asked gruffly, writing in his book without looking up.

“Chuck Beatty.”

“Profession?” More scritching of a pen on the raised desk. The platform was elevated in such a way the person talking could make eye contact with the person interviewing, much like a police station booking station, but the guy writing had no interest with making eye contact with anyone, ever.

“Writer,” Chuck replied quietly.

“Religion?”

“Uh… Christian, at least once.”

“Church?”

“Not often,” Chuck said, shuffling his heels together. The line behind him was growing slowly, but no one seemed to mind.

“Sins?”

Chuck felt compelled to hand over the bag he was holding, so he did. The gruff sergeant-at-arms took the bag, again with nary a look at Chuck, and put it on a scale. The scale tipped upwards, then downwards, then upwards again, finally balancing the feather on the other side. The sergeant grunted and tossed the bag over his shoulder, which made the scale bang down heavily on the weighted side.

“Heavy feather,” Chuck said.

“I have never heard that before.” The gruff man said sarcastically. “Go through that door.”

Chuck looked to the right, and the door swung open. It was a heavy looking door, could have been made of stone.

The man at the desk sighed theatrically. “To the right.”

Chuck turned on his heel and walked through the door. He expected it to close behind him with a grinding, heavy sound. But instead, when he turned around, the door was gone. Everything was gone. He stood alone, on a wide gray plain as far as the eye could see. It never had a horizon, it never turned into sky, instead a wide gray everywhere he looked.

“Where am I?” Chuck called out to the emptiness.

“Welcome to AfterLife. You have been wieghed and measured. Your reincarnation score is 64. You have accumulated 31 new achievements. DING. Congratulations, you have leveled up.” A computer sounding voice called back. “Would you like to review your progress?”

“Uh… yes?”

The featureless gray immediately turned into a place, and the colors made Chuck’s eyes water and sting. They were bright and vibrant, filling his mind with emotion and a sense of place.

“Oregon, 1978. You are three years old.” The voice announced.

“I remember this. This was my house.” Chuck replied in wonder. The toys strewn across the floor flooded his memory. “Ah man, these were my toys.”

“Achievement: First Share. You shared among your peers first.” The voice replied.

Two boys sat on the floor, playing with matchbox cars. A little boy with brown hair and blue eyes sat playing with two trucks, smashing them together and making explosion noises. The other little boy, in red overalls with a blue bear on his chest, watched with a finger in his mouth. The little blue eyed boy stopped and handed one of his trucks to the other boy, and they both smiled at each other.

“Wild.” Chuck grinned. The scene fizzled away and was replaced with a different room in the same house.

“Oregon, 1985. You are ten years old. Achievement: Saved. Your actions inadvertently but directly saved a peer’s life.”

“I remember this too… I told my mom about Robbie’s gun. She called his dad, and they found Robbie playing with a loaded gun.”

“Robbie was designed to kill himself. In the fourty previous runs, he succeeded.”

“Runs?” Chuck ventured, but the voice ignored him and continued on.

“Oregon, 1991. You are sixteen years old. Achievement: Independence First. You made the choice to not be pressured by your peers.” The scene fizzled out to behind his high school, a group of teenagers were out of sight behind the field house smoking cigarettes. A teenage Chuck was walking away with a confused look on his face, and a couple of boys were either calling him back or jeering, it was hard to tell.

“I didn’t hang out with Tommy after that day. He was pissed.”

“In the previous 14 runs, you succumbed to peer pressure.” The voice annouced.

“Huh. Runs?” Chuck tried again. “What are runs?”

“Query: Are you wishing to stop progress review?”

“Yes,” Chuck said, finally feeling severely confused, and finally realizing that he should have been confused a long time before this very moment in time. The scene around him faded away back to the featureless gray as far as the eye could see.

“Welcome to AfterLife, system is ready, Charles Beatty Iteration 4,422,102. For help, please say ‘help’, for progress, please say ‘progress’, and to continue, please say ‘start simulation’.”

“Uh… Help?”

“Help menu. For graphical interface, please say ‘Interface’, for reports and feedback, please say ‘reports’, and to exit back, please say ‘AfterLife’.”

“Interface.” Chuck knew that he could work a computer. He may have been a writer, but he designed his own websites and definitely had earned his nerd card. He had dabbled in all sorts of code over the last couple years, playing with all aspects of developing, updating, and making releases of his own projects. While he was not the best coder, he was persistent and loved diving deep.

“Interface is loaded. To enter, walk forward into the interface. To exit, please walk backwards out of the interface,” the voice said and faded away into the nothingness.

A bubble appeared directly in front of Chuck, no larger than a soap bubble floating in the air. The surface was not the slick rainbow thing that a child would blow from a bubble wand, but a thicker heavier bubble made of molten metal bubbling away in a furnace. Chuck stepped towards it, and one moment he was in front of the bubble, approaching it carefully, the next he was surrounded by it and simple graphical interface hovered in the air before him.

He pushed his hand forward and felt his finger tips running over the surface, as if it was right in front of him. No matter how far back he pulled his hand or pushed it forward, he felt the edges of the buttons and screens as if he was gently caressing them at whatever level he was comfortable with.

“That is a neat trick,” he grinned.

He touched the obvious menu item first. Help. A screen floated above the others and presented him something very much like wikipedia.

The screen had a quote of the day, a picture of a couple galaxies smacking into each other, and some random and popular links. He clicked the top popular result. ‘What is AfterLife?’ He read the result as it coalesced in front of him.

‘AfterLife is a system designed to allow individuals to study and develop themselves in the pursuit of achieving higher understanding. Each interface is designed to correlate to the individuals from their corresponding era, and allows them the time and space to grow at their own speed after the trauma of each simulation run.’

There were links embedded in almost every single noun in the first paragraph, and Chuck wanted to click them all. He resisted the urge and continued.

‘Each simulation run is meant to elicit a specific set of responses in the individual, allowing them to react to stimuli in unique circumstances and event chains to determine their own individual unique outcomes that can be reflected upon in AfterLife.’

“This shit is crazy.”

Chuck slid his finger over to the back button. There was no delay, no time, the other page was instantly loaded. It was more like flipping a page then it was surfing a web page. He looked back over the popular results again. ‘Is there a God?’ caught his eye. He clicked.

The page answered a question with a question. ‘How do you define God?’ There were no other links on this page. Irony there.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. The same answer as always.” Chuck muttered. He sat down and started exploring in depth.

******

It may have been hours or days or even weeks, but without a desire to sleep or eat, and so much information at his fingertips, Chuck found himself in the deepest links of the AfterLife App. The wiki stayed away from philosophy and the big questions, usually just answering the question with a question or providing some droll details about the system that circumvented the question altogether. What ever higher being put this together was a master philosopher in the sense that they never answered any of the big questions and left it to the person asking the question.

Everything changed when he accidentally found the querying tools. They were buried in what looked like a dev notes section for an innocuous personal setting page about the interface choice for the medieval-era European user that did not know how to read a written language. The voice interaction was a shell in its own way, and with a manual set of inputs, you could go into a series of menus that a normal user would never see.

“Hello blank. Welcome to AfterLife.” The AfterLife voice intoned.

Chuck pushed the interface button under his settings, and updated to unwritten input.

“Hello Charles Beatty Iteration 4,422,102. Welcome to AfterLife. Please ask a question.”

Chuck changed the input back to the interface.

“Hello Charles Beatty Iteration 4,422,102. Welcome to AfterLife. You are granted query access.”

“Fuck yes I am.” Chuck laughed. “Interface, open query tools.”

The interface changed from the wiki format into a 3D system that had floating boxes labeled in space around him. Each query tool was a self-encapsulated cube, with a series of floating blocks around it. The floating blocks appeared to be essentially predefined routines that would always result in the same output. Chuck realized the little snippets were test cases. They always should run and match what they were labeled with. Of course, it was only after dragging and dropping each one on the cube nearest it did he make the connection. Chuck tried dragging one of the blocks from one cube over to another cube, and the little block flashed red.

“So I know what an error looks like and I know what a completed task looks like… I wonder…” Chuck mused as he attempted to open one of the blocks. He had already tried to open a cube, but they didn’t respond one way or the other, so he figured he lacked access. He pulled open the block though without any difficultly and was presented a wall of text. Amazingly it was dead simple code. Everything was defined, annotated, and had interactive help when he hovered over portions of the script. This one was labeled ‘social randomness’, whatever that meant.

He knew he was looking at tools to query his own past life. What would you ask? What would you want to find out? Could he influence the next iteration? Everything pointed to living again, after all, his iteration number was over four million. That means that he had done this very same thing four million times. If he had done it four million times, that means that either he was unable to do anything or he had already done it.

If a literal light bulb could turn on above Chuck’s head, it would have.

“I don’t have to look for ways to change things. I need to look for things that have already changed… that way I could theoretically pick up where I left off. If I have limited time here, or if there is something that forces me to do the simulation again, I would have left a crumb trail.”

He started with a search function in the query system, and provided a new block that he hammered out in a few minutes. The script would scour his life and the results and the systems they rode on to look for his annotation initials. They would not be the same as his actual initials, since he annotated code with his handle name as an extra middle name. So instead of CBK, it was CMBK, or Comeback.

The bulk of the results were for his adult life, for code that he had put together himself. Some of the results were on forums or in games where he used his handle as his name. He changed the query to only check the system, and disregard the AfterLife results.

The answer was one. It was a block floating near the cube labeled ‘Interaction Float’. He pulled the block close and opened it.

‘Goto line 137, col 21,’ is all the snippet read.

“That makes no sense. This block only has the one line.” Chuck shook his head. “Unless that is the query…”

Chuck grabbed the block and dropped it on the nearest cube. The cube flashed red, then green, then red again, the strobed brightly between the two faster than he could count. After a tense ten or so seconds, the entire interface dropped out and came back up.

“Welcome back, Charles Beatty Prime.” The voice said from the nothingness. “Would you like to reload your core memory?”

“I would,” Chuck said. All of sudden, it all came flooding back. All of core memories that he had tried to retain throughout his iterations. He remembered the Forces, he remembered the Chasten, he remembered everything… including Heather.

“Interface, where is Heather Spurlock Prime?” Chuck asked in a mild panic.

“Heather Spurlock Prime is not loaded in AfterLife, and is currently within a run. You do have one message from her in your queue. Would you like to hear it?”

“I would.”

A new voice rang out from the ether. “Charlie, my love. I am glad you made it back, the Chasten are attempting to end the iteration cycles for the Known. Your escape caused a massive amount of… uproar. You need to run. Run. I will join you when I can. Love you.”

Charles swiped both of his hands up. His brain was still writing in the core memories, but he could leave the shell without it harming anything.

“Interface, reset all.”

“Done.”

“Interface, exit.”

“Goodbye, Charles Beatty Prime.”

He opened his eyes, seeing the Upper for the first time since he had agreed to go into the Simulation. The skies were gold, while massive information beams cut across the upper atmosphere, leaving harmless plasma wakes behind. He stood up steadily from his bench, feeling weak, but knowing that is was just perception.

Everything is only perception.

He ran.

The sun was shining brightly as I set out upon the mountain, the snow sparkling in its own quiet reflection within the trees surrounding me. At my feet, my snow shoes compressed the freshly fallen flakes with each step, crunching and crushing the delicate forms into the impressions of a man sized duck waddling his way up the trailhead. I cinched my pack tighter against my shoulders, feeling the heft of its reassuring weight against my back, as I headed upwards to the hanging glacier far above.

The lake was called a glacier of sorts, even though I was sure it melted every summer into a proper lake. I had never felt the compulsion to find out one way or another, instead falling back on my soft petaled ignorance of the world around me, steeped in its own ages and its own lost history. I called it a glacier, the maps called it a glacier, and my GPS called it a glacier, so the world was right by my estimation.

Each step crunching beneath me, the sound of cereal flakes being crushed winding its way up to my ears, I found myself lost in my own thoughts as I made my slow ascent into the mountains before me. My mind trailed over the options before me… the hunt for a new job, the desire to do something with my life, be a writer, travel the world, find a wife. All the things that a man of my age should think about. At least that was what I thought. I was not too sure. I hadn’t been sure for weeks, really. Months if you wanted me to be truly honest.

So this morning, as I rolled out of my warmth into the cold of another winter day, I knew that I had something to resolve in my life. As to how I was going to do that, and where I would reach that near constantly escaping epiphany was still a mystery to me, but I knew that if I started at a trailhead with my snowshoes on my feet and a lunch in my bag, my chances were better than staying at home, wallowing in my own depression.

Depression is a silly thing, really.

You are told that it is a minor inconvenience, a thing to control and subdue, another obstacle to a life that seems ever out of reach. Then it crashes down on you, an avalanche of self loathing, of a darkness that wraps its arms around you and squeezes until you can’t even cry about it. You just sit. Feeling unanchored, untethered, disconnected from everything in the universe, except the ugly part of your own mind. Feeling that acute obstruction turn into a wall, the wall turns into a prison, and the prison turn into a monster sitting on your chest, laughing at your stupidity.

And you realize that it is all silly, and the cycle starts all over again. Worse this time. And worse again after that.

That is when you realize that depression is crippling. Like losing a limb, a ghost of memories tickle your mind, telling you that something better used to be there, but it is gone now, and you don’t have a choice in the matter. It still feels. It still desires to be moved, and fingers made to wiggle, skin longing for touch, but none of that will ever happen because where that limb should be, there is only an empty place.

But this mountain will help me. This trail will show me the way, and my feet will take me to the glacier where I can start to figure things out for once in my life. And if I don’t, at least the hike will wear me out enough that I will be able to sleep tonight without taking all the meds that my fleet of highly paid guesswork artists that style themselves as doctors have instructed me to take.

The mountain was bright, the sun unleashing it’s fires down on my shoulders, lighting the reflections of the chrome frames of my snowshoes violently to the underside of the pines that held their boughy hands, arm in arm, down the sides of the trail before and behind me. They watch me progress, silent in their reverie of their own place, and whisper to one another when the wind touches their heads, giving them mouths, giving them breath, providing them the permission to tell each other how they feel. Trees are simple things, and they know their place. They are rooted in it, as they live and die. My place is nowhere and ambulatory, forever moving just slightly beyond my grasp, at the periphery of my understanding.

I want a thunderclap. I need the flash of lightning. I want my future to be made known to me immediately, painfully if need be. If God himself where to descend from his throne and corner me on the trail, explaining to me what I should do with my life, I would take the blindness gratefully. I crave purpose.

My pastor would tell me that God is my purpose. That serving the glory of heaven and bringing others to Christ is the goal. When I was a teenager, I felt the drive to be an instrument of God. It was a fire in my heart, a passion that fired me up. But as I have aged, I have learned that this world is far harsher than an ideal teenager would ever imagine. I have yet to see God give me a job, or a girlfriend, or a path… at least in any way that I could fathom.

I am alone. There is nothing standing by me, holding my hand, or telling me which way to go. Just my depression monster riding on my back like a goddamn fucking monkey.

I crested the edge of the sunken lake, the sides of the lake tumbling downwards, the frozen earth covered in feet of snow. It is mid-winter, and the heaviest snow has yet to arrive. When spring starts to think about showing up, the mountain prays for more snow to stave off the ever marching approach of summer, and the skies grant such wishes with aplomb. These trees will be buried up to their middle trunks, and the lake will become a field of white, with no proof a body of water is hidden underneath. I have always thought this could be the home of winter, if the season was personified as a deity of some sort, nestled deep in the frozen water, to emerge in a crystalline form at night to wander the forest like a yeti appreciating his surroundings. I step carefully among the buried boulders, my bulky boots twisting gently in the harnesses that connect me to my transport. I sat heavily on a partially exposed rock, freeing my backpack to eat my snack, drink my water, and commune with a part of myself that I needed to bring to the forefront.

My mother would tell me that the best parts of myself are always hidden. Secreted away in the darkest, deepest chambers of my heart, protected from horrors of the world around me. I would call her a liar, but now, I know she was right. I am a complex being, filled with history, memories, feelings, and dreams, and they merge and tumble, mix and agitate each other to become what I consider myself to be me. I am by all accounts, something human. And I hope that deep inside of myself, there is a secret me. A happy me. A positive emulation of what I should be everyday. A doppelganger of myself, ready to spring forth from a closet connected to Narnia, like my own personal Mr. Tumnus. He will look at me in shock, and say “Where, oh where, have you been?”, and I will reply, “how the fuck would I know, I have been buried in sadness the color of shit!”

My sandwich is good. The peanut butter is crunchy, the bread is soothing, and they jelly is tart. Maybe I should have been a chef. A chef of PB&Js and nothing else. Maybe I should have been a trail guide, showing people the secret places in this forest, sharing with them the awe of creation. Perhaps I should have been a mountaineer, climbing for its own sake, just me, my backpack, and the sky. I could be all those things, but a part of me knows I won’t. Still I could do with the better version of me to make an appearance today.

The crunch crunch crunch of someone walking my way swims its way through the trees, and I turn my head to gauge the approach, looking for the flashes of dark or color of a ski jacket through the trees, anything that would betray the location of the unknowing participant in my deep self reflection.

“Beautiful day!” A voice calls out from the trees.

“The best!” I lie.

“That was a lie!” The voice retorts rapid fire.

“I am working through issues!” I yell back.

“I liked the lie better!” The breathless voice calls back with an edge of humor.

The source of the voice crests the edge of the embankment, and smiles down at me. She is a brunette, wrapped in black ski pants and a purple jacket, a blue backpack slung against her back. Her smile is as brilliant as her mirrored sunglasses, and I almost have to squint to survive the glare.

“You don’t look like you are working through issues,” she laughed. “What kind of issues could you possibly have? You are in a beautiful place surrounded by an awesome day, and what? You eating a peanut butter sandwich? Everything is great!”

“Are you telling me that you are jealous of my sandwich?” I tease.

“Lauren,” she grins.

“Why are you telling me your name?” I frowned clownishly.

“So you are more inclined to share your sandwich.”

“You say that to all the boys you encounter on the trail?”

“Only the ones with oversized, delicious looking, properly lavished peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So this is the first, if you really must know. Lauren.” Lauren said as she pulled a glove off and walked towards me with her hand extended. “Mind if I share your warm looking rock?”

“So you are stealing my sandwich and my rock? Now I have two new issues.”

“Cry-baby. You depressed or something?”

I handed half of my sandwich to Lauren and answered honestly. “Yes.”

“I was depressed once.”

“Oh yeah?” I took a bite of the sandwich I had left.

“Yeah, but then I dumped the asshole and moved on.” Lauren grinned again.

“Wish I could do the same.”

Lauren sat there for a minute and chewed a few bites down, taking a drink from her water bottle in turns.

“Depression sucks. Seriously. It sucks.” Lauren said.

“Yeah, it has its moments. Sorry you had to stumble on a sad sack.”

“Eh, I got a free sandwich. Win in my book,” Lauren laughed. Her laugh was nearly magical. It tinkled and rang, bouncing around the enclosed lake side like a rubber ball in a small room. “My dad told me once that this lake was built on memories.”

“Yeah?” I replied.

“Yeah. The lake is the things you remember today, the glacier behind it is the things you will remember later. It drips and melts, filling the lake all summer. If you just yell your problems at it, the glacier will soak up all your memories and save them for later.”

“Does it work?”

“I think it does. Yes. It does.” Lauren laughed again. “Try it, slowmo. You might feel better.”

“Just yell at it?”

“Sure. I’ve done it.”

“You?” I raised an eyebrow.

“More than once,” she smiled. She was beautiful in every way I could possibly imagine. A primal part of my brain finally kicked on and I felt the flush as my face turned red.

I stood up and looked at the ice wall across the lake. It was a deep blue, crowned in white, appearing to hover above the surface of the lake below it. I guess I never thought about it, but that is probably why it was called the Hanging Glacier.

“Go on.” I felt a poke in my back.

“I HATE…” I stopped, feeling more foolish than ever. But I knew I had to do this. Why here and why now and why with a girl I had just met, but I knew it was inevitable. “I HATE THE WAY MY JOB MAKES ME FEEL.”

“I HATE THE WAY COOKIES GO STALE!” Lauren yelled in response.

Emboldened, I continued. “I HATE MY FAMILY. THEY ARE ALL ASSHOLES.”

“I HATE GRAPE SODA.” Lauren yelled next.

“I HATE HOW I FEEL WHEN I REMEMBER FUCK UPS.”

“I HATE COLD PASTA.”

I felt something break in me.

“I HATE HOW I FEEL GUILTY THAT MY BROTHER IS DEAD. I HATE HOW I FEEL SAD THAT HE FUCKED UP. I hate how I feel so angry all the time about something out of my control. I hate that I am glad that I am still alive. I hate how he was selfish in his final act. I hate my mom for trying to fix everything… I hate my dad for finding excuses to work,” I felt tears track down my cheeks, the cold made them feel like ice chips running down my face. “I HATE FEELING HELPLESS all the time. I hate being sad, and lonely, and that no one will ever love me for me. I HATE THAT I am so wrapped up in myself, I miss friends and activities, and I FUCKING LIE ABOUT IT.”

“I HATE CABBAGE.” Lauren yelled as if I had said nothing at all.

I stood there, my hands clenched at my sides, feeling the anguish and anger and sadness and grief and fear being set alight as I cried as silently as I could. My shoulders heaved up and down, turning my hitched breathing into wracking sobs, tsunamis of emotion pushing against me physically, seeking out all the corners of myself. I was exposed. Afraid and alone.

“I HATE HOW I HATE SPECIFIC FOOD STUFFS.” Lauren continued without me.

I felt a laugh bubble up and break out through my sloppy wet tears. It turned into a deep laugh, shaking my frame, and it was a balm on the ragged injury of all my pain being vomited at loud volume at the Hanging Glacier. I won’t say I was healed, but I felt almost human again. Normality was closer than I had felt in years. It was amazing. Freeing. Liberating.

I had never been in a war. I had never seen the enemy flee my city as a liberation force crested the edge of the city in their tanks and their planes, and soldiers marched forward with chocolate and candy for the filthy, bedraggled children with soot on their faces and ears that would never hear again. I had never seen anything like that, but for a split moment, I believed I knew how it felt.

I turned to thank the snarky angel that had inadvertently become my therapist. “Lauren, that was…”

Lauren was gone. In fact, there were no prints in the snow, no crumbs at the rock, nothing. Only my tracks, and half a sandwich of mine, still uneaten sitting on top of my bag.

“Lauren?” I called hesitantly. Nothing called back. There was no sound except the trees, the wind, and the occasional bird call far off in the distance.

So this is what a psychotic break is. I rubbed my temples, feeling my cold fingers press hard at the soft parts of my skull, the throbbing reminding me that my heart still beat on and that I still had to hike down. I gathered my bag, carefully pushing my sandwich back into it, threw it over my shoulders and started back towards the trail.

“Michael?” A familiar voice called out behind me.

I turned to find Lauren, dressed in different clothes, wearing a different backpack, looking at me incredulously.

“Lauren?” I said confused.

“You disappeared. Where did you go? How are you wearing a different outfit?” Lauren rambled. She was as beautiful as she had been a moment ago.

“No… you disappeared. You are definitely wearing different clothes too,” I said.

“I… was crying. I was yelling at the glacier. You told me to. You even poked me in the back. I gave you a granola bar and everything.”

“Huh. I did… you did… the same for me.”

We both stood there in silence looking at each other, millions of things unsaid tumbling in the air between us. Moments of something shared, however strange they were, still existed. Lauren knew it. I knew it.

I winked at her and smiled.

She smiled back.  And it was radiant.