“Yes,” she said, tilting her head toward me.
“Can I tell you about a dream I had, well… maybe it was less of a dream but more of a vision, a vision that still feels so real to me?”
“Of course, you know that you can tell me anything, Molly. We’re friends.”
I took a deep breath, still unsure if this was really something that I should be talking to her about. But I also felt like I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Yesterday, I spent a day out on the yacht with Henry. The day started off really beautiful but when we went snorkeling to see the underwater statues, things didn’t exactly go as planned. Henry told me that I passed out, that I had too much water in my lungs, and I had a vision inthat time, some sort of hallucination or dream that the doctor who saw me afterwards said that it was really common too. The only thing is, it just felt so goddamn real to me. Like I can’t shake the vision and the vision was of you.”
“Of me?” Ruth said, sounding shocked.
“Yes, it was of you. I was underwater and there was this statue, made or cement of stone, or I don’t even know, and I can’t find that answer because in all the records of this place, it doesn’t actually exist. The actual statue was real. Because I didn’t swallow too much water until I swam down to get a closer look at it. That’s when everything got confusing because my recollection was that one of the stone or cement women, really looked like you, so I swam up to get a closer look. But as I touched the side of what I believed to be your face, the stone cracked, and I saw your long red hair floating behind the statue in the distance as the hard shell just fell away. I grabbed your hair I swore I felt it in my hands. It really did feel so real but that was the part that Henry told me, that I had passed out underwater.”
Ruth looked frozen again, and I wondered if she had found any more information on the statue. Her eyes slowly looked me up and down as her brow furrowed and her lips pursed, looking almost human like again as though she was in deep thought.
“Ruth,” she whispered her own name to herself, again and again and again.
“Ruth? Are you okay?” I said as I leaned towards her, keeping my knees tucked tight to my chest, hiding my naked body. “Do you know anything about the underwater statues?”
“Ruth, Ruth… I, I, no, no.” She began shaking her head. “That’s not my name. That can’t be my name. But it is my name. But there’s these images?” Her eyes began rolling around and her image began to glitch as I shut the water off. I stood up, covering the front of my wet naked body as best as I could as I came walking towards her. But her image faded until she was gone.
I reached out into what was now nothing but space. The bathroom was completely filled with hot steam. I waved my arm around calling her name as though I could reach out and touch her, but she was gone.
“Ruth,” I screamed out again. Where the hell was Henry? He needed a shower too, what was taking him so long? I tried to search for a towel through the steam when I heard the sound of static through what seemed to be AI speakers in the room. Wherever the hell they were, I never actually saw them, but from how clear Ruth and Aria could speak, I guessed they had to be here somewhere. The sound stopped and then there was static again.
“Ruth?” I called out. A muffled sound echoed through the room which I believed to be the distorted sound ofMolly.
Suddenly an image appeared right in front of me. The two of us almost touching causing me to jump back. My body broke out into instant shakes, and I ran back, trying to get awayfrom him. I slammed my naked body back into the back wall of the shower, hitting my head hard. It wasn’t Ruth that was standing in front of me anymore. It was Dylan, not the real Dylan, but an identical holographic image of Dylan.
“Dylan,” I said cautiously, slowly sliding my body against the wall, trying to move away from him. To get a clear run through the steam, I couldn’t see the far wall or the door, or the bath. But what the fuck was he doing here?
“Miss Molly, my name is Gerad, how can I be of service to you today?” he said so clearly in Dylan’s voice. This was not fucking Gerad. This was a holographic image of Dylan. He was identical, his blonde hair, the curl that fell down in front of his face. He was even the same size… Definitely the image of my ex standing right in front of me. Looking a hell of a lot happier than the last time that I saw him.
“You’re not Gerad, you’re Dylan. Or at least you’re not the real Dylan. You’re an image of the Dylan that I know. An exact image.” My body began shaking hard. Something swirled deep inside my stomach. I had no idea what the fuck was going on, but this was not okay. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop any of it. I felt completely out of control of my body, and I wasn’t too sure if while standing here naked, frozen but shaking if I was going to wet myself.
The bathroom door swung open, letting in a gust of fresh air as the steam began to fade. Henry was standing tall in the doorway, his hand still clenched tight onto the doorknob. Jackie was behind him. The hologram of Dylan, or the imageof the man who believed that his name was Gerad was the only thing covering my naked body. But Henry caught my eye. He could see my face clearly, and he could see the back of the holographic image. The very image that he had created. This was his AI, he had told me himself, that he had created the whole thing, completely on his own.
Henry’s jaw clenched, and his eyes locked on me. It was the only look that I couldn’t read. Like there was nothing going on behind his eyes, as his lips pursed. Maybe it was on purpose, because right now, understanding what the hell he was thinking was no doubt the last thing that he wanted. Not with this image standing right in front of me. Not when the last ten minutes had caused me to have thousands more questions. Questions that no doubt, he knew the answers to and this time, I wasn’t letting him get away with him telling me the absolute truth of every single one.
As Henry stood there, emotionless and poised, every single thing that I felt was written all over my crying eyes and shaking body.
Henry let go of the door handle, as Jackie stepped forward, holding it open as he stormed towards me, grabbing a towel from the handle. “Good God, Miss Molly, put some clothes on in front of him,” said Henry as he grabbed hold of me, wrapping me up in a towel. Speaking about the image of Dylan as though he was really standing right in front of me.
Henry tried to pull me away, force me out of the bathroom but with the little strength that I still had in my body I pulledback. “What the hell is this, Henry?” I screamed. “What the hell is he doing here, like this…?” I asked, pointing back at Dylan’s image, who was not looking back at me so lost and confused. My stomach churned, my heart panged and I felt like I was going to be sick.
“I’ll tell you everything, I will, just right now, I need you to come with me.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Henry pulled me out of the bathroom and I scuffled alongside him, passing Jackie who refused to look at me. Henry took me into the closet and closed the door. He pressed me against the wall in the corner. I’d imagined this very scenario in my head a couple of times since being here, but with his hands tightly pressed on my shoulders pushing me up against the wall. In my vision this was a lot sexier, with fewer tears involved.
“Henry, what was that? Why is Dylan an AI hologram? Is there one of each of your staff? Is there a version of Jackie on there too?”
Henry sighed, his grip softening. His fingers no longer dug into my skin, and there was that look again, a different look. A look that I could read too well. The look of hurt, pain and defeat as his eyes watered, blinking any potential tears away before he let them fall.
“No,” he said clearly. “There is no version of Jackie in the AI that I have created, however, there is a Dylan.”
“He thinks his name is Gerad. Why does he think that his name is Gerad. And you sent Dylan home, He isn’t well, you told me yourself, so you decided to create a digital version of him? It’s just… weird, don’t you think?” I said.
“Yes, Molly. I do, of course I think it’s fucking weird, okay? You don’t think that I don’t know that?” he raised his voice at me for the first time ever as he took his hands off me. He took a step back. “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken like that,” he said, running his hands through his hair. But it wasn’t the yelling that shocked me. After all, I was speaking to him in the exact same way. It was the fact that he agreed with me. He knew how fucked up this was. Did that mean that he made this?
