her hairline at the back of her head. Just seeing them made me reach up and touch my own simplugs, how long had it been since they had been used? Too long...
I caught myself picking the edges of the metal and lowered my arm hastily. She had re-tied her hair in a quick motion in some new beguiling knot and seemed not to have noticed my distraction.
We talked then of the scenario for five minutes, about the places in it and the things we’d seen. Too soon an awkward silence came between us. I didn’t feel my thirty-odd years, I felt like a schoolboy again.
“Well, I guess I’d better get back to work,” I said.
“Sure thing. Do you work here regularly, will I see you tomorrow?”
I was scheduled for a night shift the next day, but in that instant I knew I would work a double shift if only for the chance to see her again.
“Yep, I’ll be here,” I said, rising as I did so. She said no more other than lifting a silent hand in goodbye, but her smile radiated such genuine warmth that it hooked my heart.
As I neared the kitchen I looked back and she had her head bent, sucking at the soup straw again.
I started this whole journal tonight after that conversation with her. I have the soundtrack to the Rose simulation playing from the small speakers, as if it will connect her to me. I will be seeing her tomorrow. Who knows what will happen. I hope something. But this is not a story, not a movie, not a scenario – this is real life, and things don’t happen as a story would.
I’ve been sitting here staring at that last sentence for at least ten minutes now, so I think it’s time I hit the sack. I have a double shift in front of me tomorrow.
It’s been a three days since my last entry. Looking back on my words, I feel as if a different person wrote them. She’s out of my life now and back in her pod now, this time she’ll be in there for a long haul. I won’t see her for at least ten days. This evening as I was leaving work I passed by her pod and saw the orange band of light seeping from beneath. My eyes lingered on that band, a glow that took on so much more meaning now I knew she was under there; a sheet of plastic, a layer of fluid, and a world of consciousness between us.
I thought that perhaps she might stay the whole break, I dared hope that I might have time with her. I dared dream that I was interesting to her. We had lunch two days ago, the day I did the double-shift. I took her to the upper deck, a fancier cafeteria that cost more and offered marginally better food. Most people on break didn’t bother; simulated taste within the sims is far superior, and one type of slop is equal to another in break period.
In any case, up we went to the upper deck, the massive globe of the earth dominating the faceted panels of the observatory dome above our heads. It wasn’t a cheap meal, but I couldn’t hand over the readies fast enough, paying for both of us from my meagre earnings. Suddenly numbers in my account meant nothing and I would pay anything to spend time in her presence.
We strapped into the low-set chairs and chatted as we ate. I felt her knee lightly touching mine. I didn’t react, I kept cool, I kept on as if nothing were happening, yet my senses were reaching out, my mind half closing in on itself to better capture that feeling and closeness, inhaling it in as if it were a faint and fleeting perfume on a breeze, ephemerally tantalising.
Then she shifted, and moved away. The conversation continued above the table, but underneath I kept still, in case she moved back, and we would touch again. She didn’t, and my senses reached out in vain for a feeling of her proximity.
We talked of things we liked; music, books, and of course the sims. We found out about each other; I found her age, 23 (making her ten years my junior) her home (parents came from earth when she was very young, her dad was a doctor and saved up enough cash to put the whole family into 90 minute orbit – they are in a neighbouring satellite at the moment); her friends (all of whom she only knows in the sims, she doesn’t know anyone other than myself outside in the real world); hints of her sex life (she’s a party girl, and unashamedly brash.) She’s single now, all the boyfriends she talks of are in the past tense.
Somehow this wildness, this youthful abandon, should make me wary, but I’m drawn to it. I’m not that sort of guy, my previous relationships (in the sims, of course, I’ve never had a ‘real world’ relationship) have been with sensible, logical girls. And here she is, with tattoos on her back (I saw them when she bent over – a caricature of a skull and crossbones) and dressing in stupidly garish clothes that would be better described as costumes. But in all that, she makes me so desperately infatuated as I have never been before.
The question came up, as it was bound to sooner or later, about why I was unplugged and pushing a mop around. I ducked the question – I wasn’t going to dredge up those memories. What would she think of me if she knew I'd been caught trying to cheat the system of 30,000 credits?
After our lunch (dare I call it a date?) she left for her room. I half-felt that if I were more assertive I could have made a move; I think girls like her respond to strength of character. I wasn’t going to impose myself, however – I prefer a meeting of middle ground. And so we parted.
Yesterday we met only briefly, she was finishing her lunch as I came through. I deliberately turned up later than usual – I’d been feeling foolish the way I’d been acting like a teenager around her. I stopped and we chatted. She told me she was going back early.
“Already?” was all I could say.
“I’ve got this trip planned, the Nuova Earth scenario – have you heard of it?”
“Yes, of course, a re-creation of Earth just as it is now, right? From what I’ve heard it’s pretty detailed, direct mapping of what’s below. I didn’t know they’d released it yet.”
“First day is tomorrow.”
“Are you co-op’ing with anyone?”
“No, just myself.”
“How long will you be gone for?”
She shrugged, her direct gaze piercing into mine, her lips dancing with a half-smile. “Not sure, see how it goes, I guess.”
“That sounds cool,” I said, affecting nonchalance. “You’ll have to tell me all about it when you get back.”
“Yeah, I will. I’ll post from the sim, you can get mail from those inside, can’t you?”
“Sure, umm, I’ll look up your address and keep in touch.” I didn’t tell her I’d already looked her up and knew everything a search could dig up. It wasn’t much, she was only young and therefore not much of a history.
She didn’t ask if I was going in soon, I think I must have made enough of an impression, however mysterious, about my expulsion from the sims such that she considered it unspoken territory.
She promised she would write. I wrote to her this morning. I’ve a little gadget that can monitor her mailbox, and she’s been on twice today. I watched the little icon on my monitor, sitting crouched at the desk in the cramped confines of my room, with the pipes ticking and gurgling overhead. Watching that little red icon glow showing she was between scenarios and conversing with friends and family in cyberspace, but my inbox remained empty. Then the light went grey and she was gone again.
The music to the Rose Scenario is still playing through my headphones. That is the link I had with her – I’m clinging to it, but it’s fading day-by-day. I’m finding it harder to picture her face in my mind, I can just remember fragments, her smooth legs, her high and full cheekbones, her unflinching gaze, her hair. I’ve forgotten the sound of her voice; I remember it was husky and seriously sexy, but if I try to play back our conversation in my mind I can’t hear the sound of it in my ears.
Perhaps I’m over her; a giddy roller-coaster of infatuation come to earth. Every day I have found myself passing her pod with the orange band of light from within, but as each day passes, my heart pangs are not as strong.
It’s been nine days. I received two big messages today, the first was in plain text from the Administrators, finally a reply to my incessant pleas. They said they were reviewing my case – it didn’t sound hopeful, mired a
s it was in a baffling logjam of legal talk, but at least they are replying now. Just as I was about to hit the sack a second message arrived, this one a thought-print from someone within the sims. It could only be from her.
It was short, but she was overflowing with eagerness. She told me about the time she’s been having in the scenario, her travels in the world. Then her thought-print told me something that blew my heart away, set it afire, my ears seemingly unblocking as if I’d re-surfaced from a deep dive, the world suddenly immediate and close. I’d not realised it, but my world had been padded in cottonwool for the past week.
She was coming out tomorrow to change scenarios, and said she needed a break, and asked if I was interested in catching up for dinner. I was up out of my chair and bopping to a tune in my head, resisting the urge to reply instantly. I had to appear to be cool. It took a long time to compose, to affect that right kind of casual friendliness. Twenty minutes later I had my two sentences.
It’s late and I have to get up in four hours – I’ve missed my zero-g exercises this past few days and it’s going to catch up with me. Unlike those in dream-state, I don’t have computer-controlled electrical impulses constantly twitching my muscles to keep them from atrophying.
I’m here tapping out this entry, reminded of how although our species has ascended to the