If I could turn back time, knowing everything, I would change nothing. I would love you all over again.
This was what we’d promised to each other, because subconsciously we’d known a separation was coming, that we were running out of time. And I had to believe that if he was given the choice, he would honor that promise, just like I was about to do.
Releasing the trapped breath from my lungs, I wiped my face with the back of my hand and regathered whatever composure I had left. “You’ve taken enough of my memories,” I told him. “No more.”
A furrow of confusion appeared between Lawrence’s brows that was quick to dissolve into a cold, humorless smile the moment he realized what I was talking about. “Ms. Larsson, you cannot possibly be regretting your memory deletion. You saved yourself from a great deal of pain by erasing these memories.”
“I should have talked to someone. A real person.”
“Well, if I remember your case correctly, youwereunder professional supervision. And according to them, you weren’t making any progress.”
“I didn’t know then the things I know now,” I said, mostly to console myself.
But there was truth in it, too, wasn’t there? Perhaps I was not the Anya from the Program, but I was not the person I’d been before it either, for I was able to see it clearly now: the miracle of my life. A life filled with pain and adversity but also with the kindness of people I had taken for granted. Professors and mentors and colleagues and lovers. Yes, people could do a great deal of harm to each other, but they could also do a great deal of good. They could transform each other, heal each other, form attachments that defied the forcefield of logic. Because Kai was right. Because sometimes you did get a feeling with people. Because therewassomething magical in the way people everywhere continued to come together to form systems and networks and communities with the sole purpose of proliferating life. More and more life.
“And what do you know now, Ms. Larsson?” asked Lawrence with an arrogance that stirred another whirl of emotion in me.
“That there is no dignity in suffering,” I told him, “but there is dignity in knowingwhyyou are suffering. There is dignity in healing. There is dignity in failing to heal and trying again. There is dignity in asking for help. To be wiped away, to be left with no physical form, to be reduced to a character in a story after all I’ve been through—it is an insult. I am real. I am a person. I am ahuman being. And I will live as such. However I can, I will live.”
His momentary silence was tense but remorseless. Because in his mind I wasn’t a human being. I was the target audience. “And yet,” he replied, sickly gratified, “you would have never come to this wonderful epiphany without experiencing the world I gave you. In the end, Nostalgia did help you. It did reveal and heal something in you. Because this is the answer. The peak of human development. The future of wellness.”
“You gave me a way out of my life.Ifound my way back to it.Idid that. Not you.”
With another thin little smile, in an air of unreachable superiority, he declared, “You can hold on to your memories, Ms. Larsson. I will still be here when you’ll want to be rid of them.”
For a moment, all of my righteous rage stopped burning me from the inside, and a cold, ice-hard sensation dropped over my head.Oh God, I thought blearily,if I don’t get out of here, I might actually kill this man.
“I want to go home,” I gritted out.
“I’m afraid it will be a few days before your body is able to continue with its normal biological processes without Hive’s intervention.”
Breath hitching, I glanced down at my body, shrouded in the frail white sheet of the patient gown, seemingly unmarked by Hive’s technology. It was all happening internally, I knew. It was what I’d consented to. I would have done anything to stop the misery of existing in my own head for a mere day. And that was exactly what I’d done. Anything. How I was ever going to forgive myself for this, I didn’t know. But I wanted to be forgiven. More than any promise of happiness, I wanted to beforgiven.
To finally begin the rotten work of loving myself.
“As long as it takes,” I muttered.
“Do you want us to notify your emergency contact?”
“Yes. Please.”
With a curt nod, Lawrence walked past the bed, cool and collected, his ultra-slender glasses glinting under the unpolluted brilliance of the overhead light. Then, just before he reached the door, he turned and looked at me. “I’m not a villain, Ms. Larsson. Hive is not your enemy. Our purpose here is not to exploit and distress you. We arehonestlytrying to make a difference in this world.”
I sank into the bed, a chain of unprocessed thoughts and emotions dragging down my body. “How is this making a difference?” I wondered.
His shoulders dropped a fragment, and he let out a quiet, easy breath, almost revealing something of himself. “You know,” he said in a surprisingly conversational manner, “the headset that connects you to the simulation and everyone else in it was originally developed for psychiatric use. It was meant to enable therapists to explore patients’ subconscious minds so that they could treat the root of their suffering. Of course, it was never approved because of how unpredictable a connection like that can be in an uncontrolled environment. That’s the problem withthe real world. You connect two separate consciousnesses, and suddenly reality starts to bleed.”
“Is the world really so irreparable?” I asked him, or maybe just myself. “Why not use all this energy and resources to fix what we already have?”
“You’re not listening to me, Ms. Larsson,” he said. “Reality is uncontrollable. You cannot fix what you cannot control.”
Quietly, without waiting for an answer, Lawrence lowered his face to the scanner by the side of the door and left the room.
Alone at last, I let my eyes close, conscious of nothing but the tedious mechanisms of my body, which still didn’t feel fully mine or fully here.
What happens now?I wondered numbly, and for the first time in my life I was completely out of answers. Even at my lowest, I’d had a plan to follow. Something to chase. Something to run away from. Someone to become. Never before had my future looked so blank and borderless.
One thing was revealed to me, at least. All of my previous beliefs of what constitutes agood lifehad been deluded and warped. And so now I would have to build myself a new path, construct my life around a new idea. Or maybe break free from this concept altogether, that there was, in fact, a right way to live and that my purpose on this earth was to find it.
