Chapter Eighteen
The memory of him and all the consultations we’d had together returned to me the moment he walked into the room. Anthony Lawrence. The creator.
He was younger than you’d expect, in his late thirties, tall and slender like a phantom in his sterling white lab coat. With a thin, hollow smile, he approached the bed, studying me closely as if I were some kind of test subject of his. “Ms. Larsson, how are you feeling?” he asked, and I couldn’t help but shiver at the quality of his voice. Controlled and intent, yet affectless.
“Confused,” I croaked as I clutched the sides of the bed to help myself up to a more dignified position.
He nodded mechanically, his cold blue eyes behind his round spectacles darting between me and the monitor next to the bed. “That’s understandable. But I see you’re well and stable now.”
“What—” I began, but after hearing the reedy sound of my voice, I paused to clear my throat and tried again, “What happened to me?”
Promptly, as if he’d been rehearsing for this exact question, he crossed his wrists behind his back and said, “For nearly a year you were able to reference your simulated memories without any issue, but after you recalled the word, you started to disconnect.”
“The word?” I repeated slowly, pushing through the pain that had built between my eyes and brain from trying to process all of this. “Nostalgia?”
Lawrence gave another perfunctory nod, fixing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “As you know, the Program is not perfect. Memories can slip from someone’s subconscious into the simulation and disturb its seamlessness. And although some people can recall certain words and concepts from this reality and remain completely undisturbed by them, when you recalled that word, nostalgia, which, of course, the Program immediately incorporated into the book you were reading, it triggered you, leading you to remember—”
“The memory deletion,” I gasped, shell-shocked from the realization. The realization that there had been no such thing as memory deletion in Nostalgia before me. Yes, the Center offered recalibrations, modulations, and several types of genetic therapy—cover stories, really, for someone’s temporary removal from the Program—but not memory deletion. This was a concept introduced to the simulation to sustain me alone. Which meant that James and all the other people from the office who had supposedly gone through this procedure and whom Kai and I had believed to be real had been, in fact, mere algorithms. Hollow imitations of people.
And indeed, Lawrence confirmed, “I will admit the introduction of memory deletion into the world of Nostalgia was a bit clumsy, but the simulation did its best to sustain it. After all, the purpose of the Center isn’t solely to monitor your experience but also to explain concepts that originate from this reality.”
I wasn’t sure why these particular words exerted such pressure on me, but I could feel myself cracking under it, my whole personhood a sheet of paper that had begun to rip. “Stop sayingthisreality,” I hissed, flinging my arms out to gesture at the white walls enclosing us. “Thisis the only reality. The Inside was a lie.”
“Everything you experienced within the simulation was true, Ms. Larsson,” Lawrence claimed, staring down at me with his passionless gaze.
A fresh throbbing headache unravelled from the top of my skull, and I pressed my eyes with the heels of my palms, trying to think through it, to regather my thoughts, to give them the coherence they needed to be transmuted into language. “No, that’s not true,” I heaved. “Everything was part of the Program. Even Kai. The things we shared… they weren’t real. None of it was real.”
For a heart-dropping moment the most horrible thought blinked out of the darkness of my mind.What if Kai, too, was a simulation?
But then Lawrence, with a near-offended glower, replied, “We do notmakepeople fall in love, Ms. Larsson. We do not force you to interact with anyone and in any specific way.Youchoose,youfeel,youexperience. Allwedo is bring certain people under certain circumstances together. The Nostalgia Program currently has fifty-four real members, and your friend simply happened to be one of them.”
The relief these words brought me was too small and brief to keep me anchored to my surroundings. I felt myself shrink, my body and soul dwindling to a mere particle of sand, as tiny and insignificant as a universe of fifty-four people. It was clear now. Irrefutable. My relationship with Kai had been no miracle, no gift, no fate. All this time I had felt connected to him, and he had felt connected to me, because we had managed to become real to each other in an utterly unreal world.
With a pang, I choked out, “It was only him, wasn’t it? I never met the other fifty-three.”
Lawrence said nothing, only stared at me with a kind of chill incredulity as if he couldn’t fathom why this would be a matter of significance to me.
“Answer me!” I screamed at him, beating my fists against the mattress so I wouldn’t hit myself. So I wouldn’t bang my head against the headboard until unconsciousness closed over me again.
Unflinching, Lawrence said, “Well, yes, Ms. Larsson. But this wasn’t by design. You could have connected with anyone. Even with someone you perceive now as a mere algorithm. But you chose to connect with him. And he chose to connect with you. The circumstances under which this transpired don’t make the connection a lie. It just makes it fate.”
Absurdly, I laughed, a thin, manic sound I couldn’t recognize as my own. “Fate?”
“Yes,” he persisted, his gaze shifting, clarifying—intelligence verging on obsession. “We are fate. We are the storytellers. The human race does not seek truth. It seeks story. And that is what we do here at Hive. We treat you through stories. Through concepts that challenge your beliefs about the world.”
I could not believe that I hadn’t been able to recognize it sooner. That what had been sold to me as a rejuvenating wellness retreat was in reality an interactive reverie—a year of well-paid delusion.
“Next time put fewer references to your stories,” I snarled at him, a familiar vengeful feeling gathering beneath the surface of my skin. “Maybe then yourcharacterswon’t get as triggered.”
Eyes glittering as if he was actually enjoying this bizarre conversation, Lawrence argued, “But these references to reality, the unhappiness, the conflict, the physical pain, the fear of the Outside are what make this Program so special. Happiness only exists in relation to misery. You know what misery is, and thus you know when you’re happy.”
“I was not happy in there!” I seethed. “If I were happy, my mind wouldn’t try to shock me out of that place!”
“Oh, but you were, Ms. Larsson. In fact, the only reason you stopped being happy is because you started recalling things fromthisreality. You had everything you’ve ever wanted in Nostalgia. A home. An innocuous little job. A book and a cup of tea on your nightstand. Safety, stability, love.”
“Love?” I snapped, my insides twisting at the mere remembrance of him. Kai. His thoughtfulness and beauty and intelligence. The conversations we’d had and the promises we’d made to each other. It was unbearable to think of them now, for no matter how hard I tried to adjust them, I could not fit them to reality.“That man wouldn’t love me if he knew the real me.”
And it was true, wasn’t it? What was there to love about the real me? My selfishness? My greed? My cynicism? I could barely stand my own damned self.
