Fiction

She asks him how much to get to the Lowland from here. He doesn’t answer. Recently they passed a law: Bus drivers can only log in while they’re fully stopped. In truth, there was only one case, casualty-free, of an incident investigators linked to Tweed. Still, it was enough: a double-decker omnibus turning onto an off ramp, facing rush hour traffic head-on while its driver yodelled before a digital crowd for digital points and only just veered onto the shoulder in time.

So they passed the law: only while stopped. This seemed to satisfy.

She asks again: How much to get to the Lowland? She already knows the answer and has 3 clenched in her hand, ready to pass off, but she wants to hear him say it. She asks again, and then he does: ‘It’s 3”. She passes the bill over and boards.

The bus shoots off before she sits down and she lurches forward, presses a moment longer than she needs to against a tall suit whose face she doesn’t see. She presumes him rich and worthy by the impression of him and lingers, feigning confusion, before shuffling off. That brief moment might be enough to take a bit of that wealth and worth and wear it like a suit of her own, like a perfume soon aired out. She finds an empty seat.

Now comes the long ride. She doesn’t mind and doesn’t log in.

Now’s the time to luxuriate; it all ends today and then she’ll have to start all over.

But not yet.

Now, there’s still a stretch of time before the main course, the big reveal– the precious moment when the meal’s lain out but not yet eaten. Yes, today’s the day it all snaps shut. Someone will go free and someone will die a well-deserved death. It’ll be the best one yet– six months in the making and exceedingly detailed.

Her eyes fall unseeing on the seat in front of her; her mind hums with endorphins, the gold wave of them massaging her from inside.

She is lauded among acquaintances for her saint-like ability to sit still, sometimes even with the shimmering slimes of her lenses slid out– to sit still in silent observation of people passing, plants, her own hands.

“It’d drive me mad!” they claim. “I can’t do that. It makes me sweat. It makes my heart beat hard. It’d make me sick, I think. What if there were an emergency?”

In those moments she smiles, makes no reply, and keeps staring, like she’s doing now, thinking of something soon-to-come and better.

She could picture it like a well-made reality: When she’d reveal it all; when she’d make his stomach drop; when she’d make him scream, then cry. When his wife would finally be free, and everything she’d say after…

And then the suit sits down beside her, side-saddle, his long legs angled into the narrow aisle between rows of seats.

She breathes in. Can hardly help it. They always smell so nice. Like clean laundry and deftly applied scent from a thick glass bottle; like that balmy end-of-day sweat. She abandons the day’s plans and drinks it in.

His settings are open; she scans in and finds him playing Gold Trap, a game of chance, about 9 months old and nearly obsolete. He must have a nostalgic streak. It can be hard not to, sometimes. One remembers a certain metallic ‘SHINK!’ Or a better-than-sunset smear of orange alongside another memory– a wedding, a funeral, a kiss. One never forgets what one was playing when such memories were made. Still, he should enjoy it while he can. According to the news, Gold Trap’s servers will be shut down soon.

It occurs to her: Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe he has no idea they’re about to discontinue what may well be a mnemonic for the best day of his life. Why else would he still be playing Gold Trap now, nearly a year after it’s release, when a thousand better clones improving every quality-of-life metric had long been available? Indeed, in this light, it seems almost ridiculous.

She taps him on the arm, lingering with her fingers the way strangers only accept from people they don’t fear.

He looks at her. The bus shudders. Behind his eyes, his avatar is leaping, guessing, and collecting gold coins big as hubcaps. She has his full attention.

“Hmm?” he hums.

“They’re shutting down GT’s servers soon. I heard. I think next week.” She looks at him meaningfully, forgetting that she’s not logged in.

“Ah. Oh well,” he says, half-smiles, for a moment searching for her Avatar, then turning away.

She’s aware of her face and wishes they had met instead in Tweed, where her long, lank  hair is clean and thick, where her many interests dance around her in a halo-mural, making her glow.

This makes her furious– that she cares, that she can’t let go now. She’s touched him twice already, felt a solid man beneath the suit, two types of armor stacked one on top of the other. She can sense how good it’d feel to hide inside. She wants in.

“I’m Anda.”

He glances at her. Away again. “Thanks for letting me know. About the servers.” He stays side-saddle, far away from her.

The bus chimes a full-stop; these are the Lowlands. She doesn’t want to go — it looks like she’s running off. But there’s no time to linger now; not tonight. No time to ride the bus till the stop after his, taking note. Not tonight.

She nudges a motion. He gets up and lets her pass through the doors and into the dank night.

***

The Lowlands are dark and quiet, the city’s smog nestled in all the cracks, enough to make you squint. It’s late enough that the kids and grandparents have all shuffled off to sleep– too young and old for for Tweed. She likes it here. The families full of disconnected entities are shibboleths to remind her which life is real.

Still, she breathes in deep, and coughs, and rushes home, eager to log back in.

Her cheap building leans between better ones; her apartment is a second door down a long hall.

A bed, a sink, a hot plate all in one small room, free of clutter but covered in dust and unalarming stains. A sink devoid of dishes. Bed spread with a lumpen mass of three down blankets in non-descript, faded patterns. A radiator in the corner, cold.

***

She sits on the once- expensive, sagging couch and wraps a comforter from the bed, a childhood relic soft and shiny from wear, around her shoulders. This is it. This is how it happens. Finally, finally.

She leans back and logs in, goes straight to the place they always meet– some Californian artist’s version of a golden-spired pagoda by a great, wide river, the sky forever bright with high noon, the wide, hot sun everything one needs in the middle of a Lowland winter. Humid, too, like a thermal suite at a spa– enough to calm you down, not enough to make you sweat. She prefers it dry, but he doesn’t, and this place is hers-for-him.

His Avatar is already there– same man as in life, same face, barely perked-up by Tweed filters. True, it’s long gone out of fashion to dress up too much, but the true-to-life wrinkles and paunch of him are surprisingly honest. Part of the ruse, she supposes. A red herring to make you think you’ve met a truthful man. The causes he cares about are advertised around him in a shifting pattern. A dead musician and two humanitarian crises smear the air.

He’s gone idle. She scans and sees he’s in a casino, passing time until she sends the signal that she’s there.
She needs a moment, though. Sits on their bench at the water’s edge and goes into a decor app, selects a blood red nail varnish– a red as dark as black until you see it in the sun. All things become themselves when shone upon with that bright eye. The glaucoma of the Lowlands clears up here.

Even ink runs faster. It oozes out of pen points onto the page in a luxurious scrawl. All your thoughts leak out, fast as the black can snag them. In this rotten place, her favorite, where she springs her traps, she’ll become everything she really is. When he’ll be broken and half-dead from shock, or furious and lash out at her in vain violence, her full self will take form and stand stark, witnessed by that eye, burnt clean by heat, his hate, her own heroism.

She send him the signal and he’s back in a flash.

Finally.