“I love him,” Mike says. “I’m supposed to tell him that. Tomorrow. Or whenever tomorrow was.”
There’s a look exchanged between the doctors, one that neither Greg or Mike can sort out. There’s surprise and fear and shock, and on Dr. Hester, something that’s akin to greed.
“Was this… reciprocated?” Dr. King asks slowly.
I would do it again.
What?
All of this. To get here. If I had to, I’d do it all over again.
Lucky for you, big guy, you won’t have to. I don’t know if you know this, but you’re kinda stuck with me now.
But it’s Greg who answers, because even he can feel it. “Yes.”
Dr. Hester nods, like it’s what he expected. “Was it physical?”
“Why?” Mike snarls. “Couldn’t you see it? When you were spying on us? Goddamn Commies, we’ve—”
“It doesn’t work like that, Mike,” Dr. King says. “We can’t see everything. Not with any clarity. It’s more… insight than actual sight.”
“Yes,” Greg says, because it needs to be out there. “It was physical.”
Dr. Hester sighs. “And here we thought we were so careful.”
“How?” Greg asks.
“Because. We took away the things we didn’t think were needed. Words. Phrases. Modern speech. Your trash disappeared because it was never there to begin with. There are no children because we couldn’t procure any. No cars because it would have gotten too complicated. No newspapers. No television. I gave you the books that were popular at the time. The radio shows I remembered from my youth. The music I love, because Dizzy can blow that horn, can’t he? The movies I paid forty-five cents to see. I love Amorea, Mike. I love it because it’s a world with order and boundaries. It exists because I made it the way it is. I gave it life. And I took away the things that would have complicated matters. Like desire. Like attraction. Like sex. For all intents and purposes, everyone in Amorea should have been effectively asexual and aromantic, in that they would not have formed physical and emotional bonds other than friendship.”
Greg laughs bitterly. “You think you can control it? Like you controlled everything else? You said yourself that the mind goes deeper than even you can possibly imagine. What makes you think you can control something you don’t understand?”
Dr. Hester flinches at that. Finally. Finally. “I won’t apologize for that. I did what I did because I hoped for something better.”
Mike says, “I am real, you bastard. I don’t care what you say. I am real. Maybe I am schizophrenic, and this is just a breakdown. This is just an event.”
Dr. King says, “No. Mike. Listen to me. You aren’t schizophrenic. That was an extraordinarily ill-advised attempt at keeping you from finding out the truth. We didn’t know if you’d wake. We didn’t know if you’d come back here or stay in Amorea. It was decided”—and she spits that word with such venom—“to attempt to qualify what you’d been seeing. What you’d been hearing. Because you could see and hear us, couldn’t you?”
“I’m just sick,” Mike insists. “Or You Came from Outer Space. That’s all this is. You’re experimenting on me, and you’ve taken me from my home.”
“It’s not like that,” Dr. King says, and she looks like she’s going to reach out and touch him soothingly but decides against it. “Mostly. It was merely a suggestion given to the town doctor, a gentle push.”
What do you know about schizophrenia?
“What did you see, Mr. Frazier?” Dr. Hester says, eyes bright. “What was it that you saw? How did it begin? There was a spike in your alpha wave. It fluttered. Like a bird. Like the wings of a bird. What did you see?”
The machines around him begin to beep alarmingly.
“Malcolm, maybe we should wrap it up for today,” Dr. King says. “We could resume—”
“Mr. Frazier,” Dr. Hester snaps. “What did you see!”
Greg and Mike speak at the same time, in one voice, saying one word. It’s filled with such terror and such relief that they can barely breathe around it. Their
(his)
(our)
(my)
heart is beating thunderously, their
(his)
(our)
(my)
lungs and throat constricting, and it’s painful. It hurts, but they get the word out, get it out, and even in that horror, there is the relief.
“Murmuration.”
The machines fall silent.
Greg says, “On the TV. When I was kid. With my dad. He loved nature shows. I don’t know why. There were these birds. Starlings, they’re called. When they fly, they move as a group. And there can be thousands of them all flying together as one. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Dr. Hester looks as if he’s in awe. “It’s controlled chaos. Like the mind. I’ve seen what you speak of. I’ve seen it in the neurons firing, the electrical arc of thought. It moves with purpose.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slow. “Mr. Frazier. Are you there?”
“Send me home,” Mike moans. “I want to go home.”
“Mr. Frazier, I need you to listen to me. Even if we could send you back, even if we thought it was possible, it would mean Greg Hughes would disappear. You cannot exist at the same time for long without… consequences.”
“I don’t want to disappear,” Greg says. “You can’t make me disappear.”
“You aren’t even real,” Mike snaps. “None of this is real. Sean is real. Sean is my home. You’re all liars, all of you. None of this is—”
“Sean Mellgard no longer knows you exist,” Dr. Hester says, and the air is sucked from the room.
Dr. King closes her eyes.
Mike says, “No. No, that’s not true.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Dr. Hester says, voice low. “It’s a fail-safe in place in case one of the participants passes away. We added it to Project Amorea so that if one of you died, the others wouldn’t question where they went. The moment of their death, they just… disappear. A memory wipe is in place and it’s meant to keep Amorea in balance, though sometimes corners were cut. Do you remember a man named Oscar?”
Mike says, “Fo sho, he had a stacked honey named Nadine the African Queen,” though he doesn’t know what any of his words mean.
“Did he?” Dr. Hester says. “That would explain—no matter. He existed—they existed—until they didn’t. His passing was rather sudden, much like your waking was. As soon as he died here, everything about him in Amorea was erased or reconfigured. It was the same for you. We unplugged you from Amorea, because you were moving between the real world and the construct. It triggered the fail-safe. I’m sorry to say that the moment you left, every single person in Amorea had their memories wiped of you. Even Sean. It was the only way, Mr. Frazier, to ensure the survival of the project. But take heart, if it can provide you with any solace to know that soon, it won’t matter. Because the more Mr. Hughes remembers, the more you will fade, until soon, you’re nothing but a remnant of a long-ago dream.”
XXII
MIKE DOESN’T speak for a long time after that, though Greg can feel his overwhelming grief. It permeates through everything, with every shared heartbeat, with every shared breath. It’s a howling burning deep inside of him, down to his very core. He feels the loss almost as clearly as if he suffered it himself. But Greg never knew Sean and can only pick up bits and pieces, little fragments of memories that leak out of Mike. They say things like big guy and get ya a cup of joe? There’s a smile that feels like sunshine, and every time it feels like his skin is blistering from the inside out. He’s always considered himself bisexual, maybe leaning more toward women than men, but he can taste Sean’s skin on his tongue, can almost remember the weight of him as he bore down on Mike. These little flashes of sorrow, like half-burnt photos after a fire, are all Mike thinks about.
He doesn’t try for control over Greg after that.
Greg doesn’t know whether he’s relieved or not.
/>
Drs. King and Hester all but fled the room when Mike surged forward, teeth snapping, arms rising up as high as they ever have since they woke. Greg was of a mind to let him have at it, if he could. Their fingers were curled like claws, and he felt a hollow echo of Mike’s fury, and it mixed in with his own that something like this could happen. It was strange, after, to discover he wasn’t angry for himself.
He was angry for Mike. And all that he’d lost.
Even if he isn’t real.
I am too, Mike says, voice dull and flat. I’m real. Everything I am is real. Everything I’ve ever felt is real.
Greg wants to believe him. He does. But he doesn’t know how. He’s still not quite sure he’s grasped what’s actually happened here. The position that he’s in. He wonders if, since he’s awake, he’ll have to go back to jail. If he’ll ever be able to walk free. Or even walk at all. While Mike’s distracted—
I’m real Sean’s real all real everything everything this is a dream a dream a dream
—he’s looking down at his legs, and they look like bed knobs at the knees, and broomsticks for legs. It’s a disgusting sight. He’s always found pride in being large and thick and muscular, but now he’s this twisted version of himself.
Greg’s not surprised, either, by what Dr. Hester told him. About how he ended up here. Unlike Mike, he believes him. At least about Jenny. How she framed him. That video, whatever it said, was a show of theatrics, which means she planned everything. It was fucked up, the whole situation. He’s absurdly thankful that he can’t remember what happened at the moment. He’s got too much other shit to process. He doesn’t need his wife’s betrayal on top of everything else.
That, and it’s probably better not to remember getting your skull crushed in on the floor of a prison shower.
The nurse comes in while Mike is muttering in the background. She asks him how he is, and Greg laughs at her. “How do you think I am? Do you know what you people have done to me? What you’ve made me into?”
She doesn’t say much after that.
No one does, really.
HE SLEEPS as Greg and dreams as Mike.
He dreams of a beautiful boy.
I’m not very good at this.
At what?
You.
You’re very good at me. Maybe the best of all.
How his heart aches.
GREG GETS stronger as Mike gets weaker.
It’s surprising, actually, just how quickly he begins to build up his muscles. It’s explained to him that the cryogenics used were similar to those used by NASA for planned space missions. Mike perks up a little in the back of his head at the idea of missions to space, but it’s a fleeting thing that’s gone almost as soon as it arrives.
“Stasis,” one of his physical therapists tells him as he grunts through each and every painful step he’s taking while supported by parallel bars. “Frozen almost completely solid. A gigantic popsicle. That’s all you were. It’s not perfect, not an exact science, which is why you’re going to be walking funny for a little while. Just four more steps, Greg, that’s all I’m asking for, come on. Four more steps. You can do this. Don’t wuss out now!”
He’s exhausted every night when the lights finally dim. It overwhelms him, the sheer weight of it settling heavy on his chest. He can hear Mike most times, feel that twinge that’s wrapped around their heart, but that’s all there is. Mike doesn’t talk to him. He doesn’t try and talk to Mike.
At first it’s because the thought is ridiculous, so far beyond his comprehension, that it seems safer (and saner) to not. He shouldn’t be having conversations with imaginary voices in his head, no matter how real they sound or how real everyone else seems to be convinced they are (“Who am I speaking to today? Is it Mr. Hughes or Mr. Frazier?” It’s always Mr. Hughes. Always).
He sees Dr. King more than Dr. Hester. She acts as a therapist. She wants him to think of things like recovered-memory therapy and Do you blame your mother for the way your father acted? He wants to laugh at her, to tell her he hasn’t blamed his mother for anything in a very long time, but that might not be true. There’s still that old, familiar anger he gets at her for not grabbing him by the hand and dragging him out of that house as soon as she was able. For not taking care of the both of them. For staying with the man who beat her. How dare she? How dare she do that—
“Are you angry?” Dr. King asks him one afternoon.
“I used to be,” Greg says, in what is perhaps the most truthful thing he’s said in a long time. “I could control it, though.”
“You had to control it?”
“Don’t we all?”
Mike laughs somewhere in his head.
IT’S MAYBE three weeks later when Mike speaks to him again.
Greg’s reading, since there isn’t a TV in his room. He never had much time for TV anyway. The book is… strange. He doesn’t know where it came from. Just was on the table next to his hospital bed one day. Lord of the Flies, it’s called. One of those classics he knows he was supposed to have read at some point in his life. Like Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984. He just never got around to it. In his old life, he didn’t have time. He was too busy failing at just about everything he ever did.
Mike says, “We’re all on an island, don’t you think?”
Greg stops. The words came out of his own mouth, but it wasn’t him speaking. It’s an odd feeling, a dissonance he’s not sure he’ll ever be used to. He’s felt Mike in the background, lurking, but it’s getting fainter every day. There’s a pang in his (their) chest at the thought, but they can’t stay like this forever, can they? He’s Greg Hughes. He’s always been Greg Hughes.
“Except when you’ve been Mike Frazier,” he mutters.
“When is a door not a door?” Mike asks. “When it’s ajar.”
“When is a Greg not a Greg?” Greg asks. “When he’s a Mike.”
“We read that book,” Mike says. “In our book club.”
“I know,” Greg says. “I remember.”
“Do you?”
“Some of it,” he admits. “Not everything. It’s like watching an old home movie. You can remember the memory, but not the specifics.”
“I remember,” Mike says. “I remember all of it.”
“It wasn’t real.”
Mike laughs bitterly. “It was more real than anything you’ve ever had.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
“Don’t I? I’m you, after all.”
“A washed-out version.”
“Have you ever been in love?” Mike asks.
“No.”
“I have.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I can feel it. You believe it.”
“It’s real.”
“You think it is.”
“I know it is,” Mike snaps. “I don’t care what they tell you this is. Where we are. What they did. I know it was real.”
“You’re fading.”
“I’m not.”
“You’ve been quiet.”
“Thinking.”
“About?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
A chill runs through Greg at that.
“COME ON, Mr. Hughes! You have to push. You’re better than this. You’re stronger than this! Come on, just seven more steps and you’re there!”
“DO YOU think I killed her?”
Dr. King looks up from her tablet. “Does it matter what I think?”
Greg shrugs. “You have an opinion. Everyone does. Some of the nurses. They’re scared of me.”
“I don’t know that that’s true.”
“Sure it is,” Greg says easily. “They see me how I look now, scarred and pale. Did I tell you I saw my reflection yesterday?”
Dr. King looks startled at that. “Did someone—”
Greg shakes his head. “No. There was a tray. A metal tray. I waited until the nurse left and I picked it up. Wanted to see the
damage.” He reaches up and traces a long scar that starts on the back of his head and wraps around the side of his shaved skull until it thins out above his right eye. There are other scars, of course, but this is the most prominent. “I’m disfigured.”
Dr. King hesitates. Then, “Does that bother you?”
“I looked different. In Amorea. Like I did before.”
She nods. “It was meant for you to have the fully realized version of yourself.”
“And it was the same? For all of them?”
“Yes.”
“Are they all still there?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I’m remembering,” he says. “More and more. About… before. I didn’t kill my wife. Or, I did, but only because she came at me first.”
“So you’ve said previously.”
“They wouldn’t let me testify. My attorneys. They said I came across as cold. Intimidating. Even mean. They relied on character witnesses. The chain of evidence. It didn’t work, obviously.”
“Mr. Hughes—”
“I was in the showers. Did you know that you only get to take a shower in prison every few days? Supposed to be rationing water, or some such nonsense. You don’t really think about it. The luxury of having a shower every day. It’s just something we take for granted. Get up in the morning, take a shower. Go to work. Come home. Take a shower again, if you want. Go to bed. It’s not like that in prison.”
Dr. King waits.
He says, “Over forty days and maybe my tenth, eleventh shower. The water is always lukewarm. The soap is granulated and dries out your skin. The shampoo smells like medicine. You don’t want to get that shit in your eye. It burns like nothing you’ve ever felt before.
“They came at me. I think there were four of them. One moment I was trying to get that soap off my skin, and the next I was lying on the ground, blinking through the blood running down my head. I don’t remember what they looked like. Shaved heads, maybe? Tattoos. Probably. I don’t know. I remember thinking, This is a nightmare. This whole thing is a nightmare. These months and years. I’ll wake up soon. I’ll wake up and Jenny and I won’t have gotten drunk, she won’t have gotten pregnant. We won’t have gotten married. Our daughter won’t have been born only to die. I won’t have lost my mind a little bit. Jenny won’t have lost hers completely. She won’t have attacked me. I won’t have killed her. I won’t be lying on the ground, a man I’ve never seen before reaching for my head and hissing in my ear that this was for Jenny and then smashing my head on the dirty floor of a prison shower again and again.”