focus off of Celia. She slowly slipped into unconsciousness, and everything I could see in front of me melted away.
In about a minute a grassy meadow began to form in front of me. There were no buildings around me, no cars, not even the lab I knew I was standing in. I tried to take a step forward, but bumped into something hard. I looked down but there was nothing there. I stood there dumbfounded before I suddenly remembered that I was only seeing what Celia was experiencing. I’d have to use the controller if I wanted to move. I moved one of the analog sticks around, knowing my father would have set it for camera control. Sure enough, I was correct and faced Celia.
She gazed back at me, a small blush slowly growing on her face.
“I’ve wanted to see this for a long time,” she said, tears almost forming in her eyes.
“A meadow?”
“Not just a meadow. Nature, Toby. The world now is so full of buildings and technology. Yes, humanity has been better off with those things, but we’ve lost a vast amount of nature in the process.
“Other than the small nature and wildlife reserves we have, what about this? Where are the meadows and forests?”
I looked through Celia’s world, a somber feeling beginning to grow within me. I thought I had known so much about Celia, but I had no idea just how much of the world she truly wanted to see. I had never taken the time to even notice how much our world had been overrun with science.
“I’m glad you’re here with me, Toby,” she moved toward me, or rather the virtual me. I had no way of actually seeing what I looked like in the Dream Rift, so I could only imagine that I appeared how Celia normally saw me. She didn’t seem like she saw me any other way.
I turned myself to face her, seeing her lean in for a kiss. I didn’t feel it, but my heart was beating at a thousand miles an hour nonetheless as I watched her lips approach. I was elated. This meant that she really did feel the same way about me as I did for her. I wanted so much to kiss her back, I threw off my glasses and happily turned to faced her unconscious body. But what I saw horrified me.
I stood stunned, my heart in my throat. My father ran around his lab, desperately trying to shut off the Dream Rift. It seemed Celia had been experiencing a seizure while inside the session, the likes of which was causing a meltdown of the system. I put the glasses back on and frantically searched for her in the now darkening meadow. She had left that spot and wandered across the meadow, the blush on her face a deeper red as she thought about the kiss she had just shared with my avatar.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked as she gazed across the meadow.
“Celia, we have to get out of here now.”
“I hope we can find a meadow like this on our travels, Toby.”
“Celia, no, please, you have to wake up!”
“Promise me we’ll find one, okay?”
“Celiaaaaaa!”
The sky turned black. The meadow faded into nothing while Celia’s body dissipated into the wind and Celia’s words echoed into the void that was left. I removed my glasses and fell to my knees, staring at her limp body as tears streamed down my face.
My father continued trying to shut the program down, unaware that Celia was no longer here. I wanted all of this to be a dream, a sick and twisted dream I could wake up from. The program was supposed to be safe, why was there a sudden meltdown? Why did it have to take Celia away from me? Why do I have to be trapped in this miserable reality without her? Why why why? I wanted nothing more at that moment than to stand with her in that meadow, to feel her lips press against mine whether it was virtual or not. I wanted her beside me again. But that was a wish reality would not be able to grant.
I fell to the floor sobbing and slowly allowed darkness to encroach over me, sinking into the sweet oblivion of my dreams, hoping against hope to see her just one more time.
The days after Celia’s death passed so slowly. I sat in the funeral home thinking, always thinking, of Celia slowly slipping away before my eyes. Since the Dream Rift was my father’s invention, he was held fully responsible for using Celia as a test subject. I had tried reasoning with authorities that she had volunteered for the test, but my father insisted that I was trying to protect him. I could only watch as they took him to prison.
“I believe we have a young speaker today. He was my daughter’s closest friend,” a voice called from the altar, snapping me back to the present. I stood up and walked toward it. The voice came from Celia’s father. I didn’t know him very well, just from the occasional brief meetings with him whenever Celia and I planned to spend time together. Despite this, the sadness in his voice was disheartening. All of the guests had their eyes on me while I walked. I couldn’t have felt any more awkward than at this moment.
No, I was wrong. There would be many more awkward moments than this, each of them caused by Celia’s absence. Every moment that I had spent with her had been a blessing, and I hadn’t realized just how much I depended on her until she was gone. I still wasn’t sure how I was going to cope in this harsh world without her. Out of everyone in the entire world, she was the only person that understood me, the one person I could confide in when no one else would listen. I took my place at the altar ready to cry.
“Celia... she dreamed of meadows. She dreamed of being able to see nature in a true state. We have so much science and technology that covers this planet now. But what about nature? Where are the plants? The forests? Meadows? Rivers? Sure, we have nature reserves and zoos set up now. But Celia wanted to see the real thing, to coexist with the world as it used to be.
“She entered my father’s Dream Rift so that she could live her dream... Her final words to me were...” my voice trailed off, racked with sobs. This was too much. I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. I could only think about Celia being unable to realize she was dying, unable to realize that her world was fading into an eternal darkness. My last sight of her gradually disappearing in front of me surfaced again.
Tears began to fall from my eyes, first softly then growing in strength, memories of every moment I spent with her filling my head. I remembered taking her to senior prom, spending countless hours looking at the night sky with her, getting caught in thunderstorms, and the day we first met as ninth graders. Her voice, her smell, everything about her filled my head.
“‘Promise me we’ll find one… okay?’ Celia said that to me before she died, as she faded away in front of me. She wanted the two of us to travel and find a real meadow, not some imaginary one. She was, and always will be my most precious treasure...”
I gazed at her lifeless body in its casket and took a step toward it. The funeral guests gasped as I walked closer, tears streaming down my face. Her face was peaceful, an everlasting image of beauty that quietly hid the truth of her death. I almost didn’t notice myself moving closer to her. All I could feel was sadness at her leaving me, anger at being powerless to stop it. I had to make things right, but how?
It no longer felt like there was an entire room of guests watching me now. Or maybe I just didn’t care anymore. I felt like it was just me and Celia alone in this room. In that instant, I leaned forward and kissed her silent lips, something I wasn’t able to do in the Dream Rift or here in the real world. I think my action may have shocked the audience, but I was beyond caring about them. This was all I could do to show Celia how I truly felt.
The rest of the funeral went smoothly. Celia’s parents spoke, her siblings spoke, and I cried. I cried the entire time. There was no longer any reason to hold back my tears. Celia was gone, and there was no bringing her back. Her body was lowered into the ground as the dirt covered her, taking her from my view forever.
People began to leave, but I couldn’t move. Everything had to be nothing but a dream, a cruel dream that I could escape.
I ended up leaving about an hour after the service, returning to my home. The door slid open, and I took a step inside. It felt lonely and grim without the usual boisterous noise of my father. But nothing could feel worse than no l
onger having Celia beside me. I kept walking, going up the stairs toward my room. I didn’t bother with making dinner, my appetite was completely gone. I turned on the lights, but I wasn’t in my room. Somehow, my feet had led me back into the lab, the beginning and ending of it all.
Tears filled my eyes once more as the events from that fateful day flashed before me. I lightly ran my hands along the various inventions my father had made, coming to a small orb like object. I remember that he once told me that this orb was the reason behind him becoming a scientist. It was something his own father had passed down to him. It didn’t seem to do anything, but he held onto it for whatever reason.
The Dream Rift was the next thing to catch my eye, the memory of those last moments with Celia filling my head. I took a step toward it, unsure of the exact reason. My father had built a series of controls on the side to activate it. I can only assume he had intended to be the real first test. Without warning, I turned the machine on and thought of Celia. I thought of her smile, her tears, every memory I had of her, and placed the virtual reality