Inside, life touched me and resounded through me. Even in my darkest times I was able to recognize the beauty in the world. Dry sycamore leaves piling along the side of the road, autumn fog clinging to the windows early in the morning, fresh sheets billowing in the wind, the smell of books and the taste of bitter coffee, a girl on a bicycle and her flying red scarf, the moon and the sun and everything they affected.
I found it impossible to feel now as I once had about all these things. In reality, life had never been a sensory experience for me. Every day I saw things and people and places, but I never reallylookedat them. The world was a flat screen of information, something to peruse but never to admire, let alone be a part of.
And yet, unshakable Lawrence claimed, “You were the real you, Ms. Larsson. We didn’t change your personality and idiosyncrasies. We didn’t even change your name. People are products of their environment. It is not in your nature to be anxious and preoccupied and miserable. It is the society you are living in that has made you be as such. You are proof of this. We might work with psychologists, yes, but we are not ones. We are not here to treat you individually, to tell you that the pain you are experiencing is solely an internal one. Here, we don’t just diagnose you. We provide you with actual, tangible solutions.”
It frightened me. The bleary brightness in his eyes. And his words, too. The claim that humanity was doomed to always look for a place that wasn’t here to heal itself. The idea that fantasy was not what made reality more beautiful but merely more bearable, and that his work was actually holy—he, the dear savior of this new world we were living in. The audacity of him. The actual fucking audacity of this man.
“You are the most deluded person I’ve ever met,” I told him, my voice shaking from the weight of my memories. That fight with Kai, which had not been about the Center, after all, butthis. “Do you not see how wrong it is? To recognize the pain in the world, to have the intelligence and resources to actually help humanity improve, and to decide to merely profit off of it. To createwellness retreats, for fuck’s sake. You are not healing anyone. You are selling a very expensive product to the very few people who can afford it while the rest of the world continues to suffer. You are profiting from the disintegration of this reality. You want humanity to fail, don’t you? You want to become indispensable to us. You want normal people to spend decades saving money just to experience a year of delusion.”
Staring down at me, tall and impermeable, unaffected by my words because why would he be, he only asked, “And what about Mr. Park?”
Instant catch of my breath—a dropping sensation in my stomach as if the room’s gravity had changed. “Park?” I croaked.
“Kai Alwyn Park,” he said, wielding each letter of each name like a weapon. “Do you no longer wish to be with him?”
Oh God, I thought,Kai.
Kai, whose consciousness was still floating in there, who at this very moment had no idea what was happening, who didn’t really mean to fight with me that night but had only defended the Center because, unlike me, his brain wasn’t rejecting the Program. Because he perhapsneededthe Program to escape his own pain, his own tragic history.
What a shock it was to imagine him in reality, the both of us, suffering at the same time and place on this earth, desperate enough for relief to do this to ourselves.
Another barrage of disjointed memories: the scent of his cologne, his hand holding mine as we made our way through Sullivan’s, his dark, gentle eyes when he said,You could do a lot of things to me, Anya. Disappointing me isn’t one of them.
Oh, but I would. And, God, we had never even loved each other in reality. We had never held each other’s hands, seen each other’s faces. We had never cooked in his tiny kitchen. We had never swum in the cold October sea. We had never made love late at night, murmuring promises in each other’s ears.
Kai Alwyn Park.
“I do not know this man,” I whispered, my breath as short and brittle as my memories of him.
And here Lawrence continued, thecreatorof all this misery, pressing me, unrelenting, “Only that you do know him, Ms. Larsson. Quite intimately, according to your cerebral metrics. And if you don’t return to him, all the memories he has of you will be deleted. Your existence and personhood within the Program will be completely and irreversibly erased. There’s no other way. The simulation must continue with or without you.”
Helplessly, I sobbed, making no sound, just heaving into my palms, replaying in my mind our last moments together.
If you love me, you’ll come with me.
And if you love me, you’ll stay. Do you like this answer?
I could see now how cruel, how wretched it was of me to try and make him choose. Because it was an impossible choice. Because, in reality, we owed things to ourselves too, not just to each other.
Yes, I loved him. I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone, more than I thought myself capable of loving. And I wanted to go back to him, go backforhim, if only for a moment, if only to tell him just that. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Remaining there, in Nostalgia, Kai wasn’t just exiting my life but the entire vicinity of life. As though he were dead, or at least trapped in a place similar to death. A place forever closed off to the conscious and living.
The things we owe to ourselves.
In a feeble, broken voice I asked, “Will he ever wake up?”
“Mr. Park has signed up for our longest Program yet. Three years of simulated reality. He’s currently experiencing his second year,” revealed Lawrence. “But, I’m afraid your relationship cannot exist outside of Nostalgia. Typically, we erase the memories people accumulate during their time in the Programs before they’re awakened to prevent instances of derealization and psychosis. That way people can keep all the positive feelings the simulation has given them and return to society without any sentimental attachment to the lives they led within the Programs. The only reason we didn’t immediately erase your memories is because you had such a severe psychosomatic reaction upon your awakening we had to make sure you were stable first.”
More tears streamed, hot and uncontrollable, down my face, and I clamped a hand over my mouth to muffle the ragged cry that wanted to escape me. “He might remember,” I whimpered into my palm, and the words only made me feel more hopeless, for I could hear the sheer improbability of it in my own voice.
I couldn’t think of anything, not one tangible thing that could retrieve Kai from the vague realm of memory and bring him back to me in the real world.
“There is a chance,” said Lawrence flatly. “The subconscious mind is a vast and unpredictable realm. But I wouldn’t count on it. What I can do, however, is offer you a solution.”
My head jerked up from my palms. “I’ve had enough of your solutions,” I snarled.
Ignoring me, he continued, “You are stable enough now. Let us perform the memory deletion and relieve you from all this…frustration that you’re feeling.”
But it was not frustration. It was guilt. Guilt and shame,for to wipe away all Kai and I had shared, the understanding and happiness and love, no matter how brief or calibrated, seemed to be an even greater betrayal than not going back to him.
