First she and I were lovers, then we became soulmates. Together we traveled all around Earth (except for places she’d visited with Milos), and in the third year we took off for the Moon and Venus. Bitter memories of my past kept revisiting me once in a while, but in my mind I looked at them as if through the white film of a cataract. The past was eluding me, and with it the fear of immortality started to disappear too.
Until one slippery stair changed everything.
A long basalt staircase led to a neo-Buddhist temple on the flat top of Anala Mons on Venus. Numerous black bricks polished to a shine by thousands of weary feet clambered up the steep slope, weaving between volcanic rocks and shrubs of pale green ferns. Nancy had insisted on making the ascent, along with hundreds of others, half of them Tibetan pilgrims and the other half rich pan-European tourists in search of spiritual exaltation. I didn’t mind joining her. All I had to do was whine and complain all along the way up to hide the fact that I couldn’t feel fatigue in the sim.
After a two-hour climb, I saw the looming shapes of the temple as it came out of the gray clumps of clouds, and I rushed to the top past Nancy. A dozen steps short of the mountaintop I heard a scream behind me and turned. Nancy was falling down the stairs, slipping on some steps, rolling over others, her backpack bumping on her side and her slippers making impossible arcs in the air. A yellow-robed monk caught her by the strap a flight below, and I rushed down, still believing anything that happened in the sim could be miraculously fixed.
I leaned over Nancy’s motionless body, removed strands of black hair from her bruised face, smudging rich red blood over the sweaty bronze skin. I was hoping that any moment she would open her eyes, look at me, shake her head and smile, like I’d seen in many virt-sims before, but seconds passed, and people were racing up the stairs for help, and the blood gushing from the split on the back of Nancy’s head was all too realistic.
“How do I reverse it?” I babbled, tearing a sleeve off of my shirt to put it over the wound. “There must be an autosave or something. How do I fix it?”
The monk that’d caught Nancy just looked back at me with a frown and then turned away his wrinkled face, his yellow robe now smudged with red.
Ten minutes later I was shaking in an emergency helicopter, watching medics try to do the impossible. Before the vehicle landed, I tore off the trodes from my skull, but the picture kept floating before my eyes for half a minute: three white backs bending over Nancy’s still body and her bloodless hand hanging down the side of the stretcher.
In blind anger, I pounded on the soft walls with my veiny fists, propelling myself across the capsule with every punch, howling like an animal, scraping my face to blood.
I had lost Nancy, and I couldn’t follow her to the afterlife.
It took me a month to figure out how to use the console in the sim, and another half a year of fanatical research to master it. I still don’t know whether Afu consciously left it there for users’ access or his program was just too raw. Either way, for me it became a source of occult knowledge and divine power. Without it, I was just an immortal prisoner in my capsule. With it, I could change virtual reality by wish. I could bring Nancy back to life.
My heart was racing when I opened the door to her hospital room for the first time. There she lay, still pale and weak, her bed facing a giant sunroom window with a view of the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. I crossed the room and sat on a chair near her bed, but she kept staring into space, as if not noticing me. I cleared my throat, waited, and cleared my throat again. Finally, I opened my mouth to call her by name, but she spoke first.
“Why did you come?” Her voice crackled, as if she hadn’t been using it for quite a while.
“I wanted to see you after you came out of the coma.” I touched her hand, but she hid it under a blanket, her eyes still fixed on the mountain ridge.
“I wasn’t in a coma. I was dead, buried, forgotten, and you just … undid it all. Proud of yourself?” Still her mind was there, among the gray peaks under a serene blue sky.
After a second of uneasy silence, I laughed and stood up to pour myself some water from a decanter.
“At least you’re not saying you saw the light and some bearded old man in Heaven,” I managed with a forced grin.
Just as I said so, a doctor entered the room without knocking: a Caucasian woman with a buzz cut.
“Enjoying the company?” she asked briefly, tapping a button on the wall touchscreen. The Himalayas gradually dimmed as the windows darkened and, finally, turned into mirrors.
“Of course. Nancy thinks I resurrected her, though. Tell her it’s all post-coma talk.” I sipped water from a plastic cup.
“‘Resurrection’ would be a rather poor word choice.” The doctor’s voice sounded cold, almost mechanical. “But something did bring her back from the dead, and placed her into this hospital. I would say we came into contact with a power we are yet to understand.”
The plastic cup almost slipped from my fingers as the water went down the wrong pipe, and I forced myself not to cough.
“What kind of metaphysics is that?” I hissed, knocking myself in the chest to let the spasm pass.
“You did it to me, Ulysses. We already know it,” said Nancy, finally turning her sickly birdlike face to me.
“We? We who?” I blurted.
“We, the people of this world,” the doctor was talking again. “The only question left is, who are you?”
“Who are you, Ulysses?” Nancy echoed, softly.
“Who are you?” they repeated in chorus, both staring at me.
Before the plastic cup fell on the floor, I was already offline, my hands shaking, cold sweat licking my skin.
“What have I done?” I kept whispering. “What have I done?”
After a day of restless work on the console, I staged another meeting with Nancy, this time in a car. I thought a ride along the Persian Gulf highway would calm both of us.
“Stop playing with me! I’m not your toy!” Nancy shouted right away, furiously smearing the makeup I’d put over her face during the encounter setup.
“Nancy, listen to—”
She didn’t let me finish, but opened the door and jumped out of the car to land under an oncoming tourist bus. There was a short screech of metal and a rough bump as the bus tore off the side door and smudged her body all over the side of my SUV.
Next time I was smarter choosing a place for the encounter. I brought us together in the middle of an empty football stadium.
“This is how you envision our date? How desperate are you?” Nancy said as soon as she found herself standing in front me. Her words echoed among thousands of empty plastic seats, spotlights bombarding us with blinding beams.
“Nancy, please, let’s talk.” I stepped back, my hands raised in submission.
“That’s what Milos liked to do before he disappeared: talk.” She kicked off her sandals and headed toward the nearest stand across the field.
“Nancy, dear, I’m not gonna be like Milos.…” I pleaded, following her.
“Of course you aren’t. He was just your gestalt, just like me.” She suddenly stopped and turned, observing the effect her words had on me. “I wish I could meet the real Milos and compare him to your image of him.” She continued her angry pace toward the edge of the field.
“It’s impossible.…” I muttered, looking after her.
When I caught up with Nancy, she’d already reached the stand and was halfway up the stairs.
“You’re not a gestalt, Nancy. To me, you’re real,” I managed.
“If you thought I was real, you would’ve let me die back there, on Venus. Now, it’s up to me to prove how real I am.” Even though she was breathing heavily, there was grim determination in her voice.
“Prove how?”
“Kill myself. Unlike me, you’re deprived of that optio
n in this capsule of yours, aren’t you?” She reached the edge of the stadium and turned to me, ghostly lights of a great city shining behind her. Only a low green railing separated her and the dark street below.
“How do you know all of this?” I babbled.
“I wouldn’t, if you hadn’t resurrected me. But each time you use the console, I know a little more about myself, about my world, about you.” Her black hair fluttered in a warm June wind. “You want to know why? Because I am a creation of your mind, and your mind is sick and tired of lying to itself. You just have to accept the truth, Ulysses.” She stepped closer and touched my cheek.
“What truth?” I forced myself to meet her eyes.
“That you have to let things go and endure your fate.”
She gave me a short kiss before she sat on the railing, spread her hands, and fell back over. I didn’t see her body hitting the ground, nor did I hear a sound.
After that session I spent hours floating inside the bubble with a small mirror in my hand. “Endure your fate,” I kept repeating to myself under my breath.
That day I cut my beard with scissors, then shaved off the remains of it with a razor. Under that greasy facial hair, my pale skin was dotted with pimples and a rash, so I took a long shower and was surprised to see sharp rows of ribs where pectoral muscles once used to be. Within a week I returned to exercising, hoping to regain my shape, even though the damage to the joints and bones seemed to be permanent. I started reading instead of going online, but the temptation was too strong.
I resurrected Nancy again on the fifth anniversary of our first date. Before she got a chance to hurl herself out of the window, I told her I had changed and would leave her alone for good after a final date. She didn’t say a word, just nodded silently. That night we went to an opera house, and on our way back to the hotel she asked me to stop by a gas station.
“You gonna kill yourself again?” I asked her.
“I thought it was a part of the deal,” Nancy said, touching her golden necklace.
I pulled over to the side of the road, and we left the car. Stilettos clattering on asphalt and paving stone, Nancy slowly crossed the street toward the gas station, ignoring traffic as cars dodged her and honked. She swiped a credit card on the pump, took a hold of the hose, and made eye contact with me before splashing her black evening dress with gasoline. The station manager ran out of the building, shouting something at the top of his lungs, as Nancy lit a cigarette. Fire enveloped her within a blink of an eye, and before she threw up her hands in agony there came a blast.
That night I watched Nancy burn down to the yellowed bones and then went offline, tired.
I was surprised that I didn’t feel the desire to see her anymore. That’s why I broke my promise yet again. There was no conversation on that last date, no eye contact. Nancy just sat stiffly at the table in the boathouse restaurant, the tall figure of the Indian waiter looming behind her shoulder. With contempt, she watched me devour the dinner, first my meal, then hers. When I was done, I sent the waiter off with a tip, then wiped my hands and face with a napkin, produced a straight razor out of my suit pocket, and handed it to Nancy.
“Trust me, that’s the end of it,” I said, pulling my hand back as she reached for the blade. “Not here, people are staring at us. Go to the restroom and do it quick.”
As she took the razor and quietly walked away, I ordered another steak. I was still working on it, when an old woman ran out of the restroom, shouting. I didn’t stop eating. I had to vomit Nancy out of my life.
I haven’t gone online a single time since then. I still remember Owen and Nancy, Milos and Phoebe, Radzinsky and Afu, but they’re gone forever. If it means I have to live with my losses for eternity, so be it.
Now that I’m writing this journal, I keep hearing something scraping on the bubble’s skin, an elusive, distant sound. Maybe it’s a search probe docking with my capsule to carry me back to Mars. Or, maybe, it’s madness.…
These Walls of Despair
written by
Anaea Lay
illustrated by
Bernardo Mota
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A natural city girl raised in deep ruralia, Anaea Lay currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she sells real estate under a different name and collects jobs the way that the Internet collects cats.
When she isn’t advising clients on how well a potential home could be defended during the zombie apocalypse, she can be found running the Strange Horizons podcast, writing reviews for Publishers Weekly, waxing poetic on the virtues of well-designed resource management board games, or chasing a secret recipe for the perfect cup of hot chocolate.
Her short fiction has appeared in places such as Lightspeed, Apex, Daily Science Fiction and Waylines. Her long fiction is currently looking for a home.
Anaea can be found online at: anaealay.com.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Bernardo Mota was born on February 5, 1996, in Setúbal, Portugal, and has had a fun ride so far. Interested in genetically engineering animals, convincing friends that the world was at stake and playing out more fantasies in his head than in retaining memories, his childhood was confusing and lacked drawing.
Growing up surrounded by books, movies, video games and the Internet brought out in him an interest in science fiction, fantasy and, eventually, illustration.
He started drawing at the age of thirteen, desperate to find out if it was an interesting path before having to choose a high school course, and it quickly became an obsession.
His short comic won the second place in the Amadora BD 2011 contest for work in his age range, and he was formally honored as a young talent by his hometown the next year.
He is now in his last year of high school, and is very excited about what the future holds for him.
See Bernardo's art online at: bemota.daportfolio.com or visit him on Facebook at BernardoMotaIllustration.
These Walls of Despair
I loathe prison duty.
I pressed the small black button on the side of my case, then watched as its retractable legs unfolded, the top of the case sliding away as the sides expanded. In a moment the whole contraption had transformed into a passable chemist’s table, the vials I would need displayed neatly in three rows. They were labeled in tiny script, painstakingly neat. Trust me about the painstaking; Master Nubeshai has exacting standards. Someday, when I have apprentices of my own, I’m going to cackle quietly in my closet while they write out hundreds of labels.
And I’ll never take prison duty again.
My patient sat with her legs folded beneath her, staring at me with a true-calm face. People always try to look calm when they know they’re being watched by a Sentimancer, but they do it by putting on a blank expression. Calm is a balance, not an absence. Even an apprentice Sentimancer knows that.
She was genuinely calm, though. In just a few short hours she’d face a hostile court that was certain to convict her, to execute her, and she was a portrait of serenity. Psychopath. That’s why defendants are entitled to a pretrial consultation with a Sentimancer; they have the right to appear in court with the feelings they think they ought to have.
“There are just three emotions,” I said, breaking into my bedside patter to hide my distaste for the garishly lit corridor and my reluctance to cross the force field and trap myself in a cell with her. “Fear, hunger and pleasure. Everything else is a combination of those fundamental elements. Before we can start tweaking your chemistry to create your desired emotional state, I’ll need to take a blood sample and establish a baseline.”
She was frightfully thin, her bones outlined by her skin as a series of sharp corners and sudden concavities. Her ears were too large for her head, jutting out from strands of scraggly hair. She was ugly. And calm.
“Did your law
yer have a recommendation or preference?” I asked, continuing blithely on with the standard patter.
“I have no lawyer,” she said.
Right. She’d refused counsel, refused plea agreements, refused to give any defense. Five minutes into the interview I’d already forgotten everything except that this scarecrow of a woman before me had been caught trying to wake Dhalig Mora from his eternal slumber. Very professional, Georg.
“Of course. Just your thoughts, then. Remorse? Nervousness?” Fear. Unadulterated fear would be best.
“Thank you, but I won’t be using your services.”
“Oh. Well.” Time to get out of there. If I was quick, I could catch a tram to the barrows and place bets on the urchins playing rat-catcher, Master Nubeshai none the wiser. I pressed the button on my case once more, let it fold back into its compacted form, then hefted it onto my shoulders. But I couldn’t just leave it at that. Psychopath or not, what she’d tried was unfathomable. “Why did you do it?”
She smiled just enough to reveal a gap in her front teeth, more edges and crevices. “To end the world.” It struck me then that as unattractive as her physical features were, her voice was stunningly beautiful. Rich and heavy, much more so than what I’d expect from anyone so scrawny, it resonated as if it tickled the strings of the universe.
I should have strutted on out of there, lost my pocket change gambling, then slipped back to the hall in time for supper and never seen her again. Well, Master Nubeshai has never accused me of being good at doing what I ought to.
“I know that. But why?”
She cocked her head to the side and studied me. “Show me your wrists.”
I hesitated a long moment. Prisoners are entitled to consultation with a Sentimancer, but a first-day apprentice meets the legal requirements. Three years into my training, I’d earned four black circles around my right wrist. I was intensely proud of each of them, but all she would see were four lone marks where she expected an intricate network of bands. Still, I’d been impertinent, and she was entitled to see what level of Sentimancer she’d been sent. I pushed back my sleeves and held out my wrists for her.