Aliens appeared on the bridge. Angry, green monsters, with bright yellow fangs. The entire crew jumped up from their stations to fight.
I watched my husband pull a knife from his pocket. The weapon didn’t belong in this time frame, but Don must have wanted to hold something real. I recognized it as one of many from our kitchen drawer. He dodged a light-beam and then charged the hologram alien who’d fired on him and whose round silver eyes quivered in fear. The warrior screamed in pain even though Don’s blade only glanced the being’s upper arm. In a blink, I understood. The Sensavision, loyally programmed, had adjusted the knife’s trajectory and the holographic soldier lay dead on the floor, pierced fatally through the heart.
“Haaaaaaaaaah.” My husband released a long breath, and dropped his shoulders.
“Don?”
He turned, eyes blazing, and advanced on me. I stepped back. “Hey,” I said, attempting a light tone, but failing to keep the panic from my voice. Although the soldier at his feet wasn’t real and the aliens’ weapons weren’t real, the blade Don held, and my fear, were.
He launched himself at me, knife high and ready to strike.
I screamed.
And, just like in stories, he blinked. For a moment, ever so brief, he looked sheepish. Then, as he lowered the weapon, his mood changed. The Sensavision froze.
“Don’t ever do that!” he yelled.
“Do what?”
“Interrupt me. You always ruin everything.”
A burst of anger skyrocketed in my chest. My mind exploded with white light as I fought for control. “Me? Ruin things for you?”
“Look,” he said, still furious, “I work all day. This is my way to relax. All I ask is that I get a little uninterrupted pleasure here. At least I’m home. Most guys go out on Saturday nights. Can’t you just go… do something?”
I opened and closed my mouth twice. “You aren’t here,” I said. “You don’t know anything about anything around here. You have no time for me. But you have time for this-thing.” I shot my hand toward the Sensavision.
He sat down hard on the chair behind him. It gave a high-pitched whoosh. “You want to talk? Fine. All the fun’s gone now anyway. Whaddyawanna talk about?”
In that instant I realized how futile it would be to discuss my concerns about Gran with him. And so I said the only other thing that was on my mind.
“We have no life together, Don.”
Did I expect him to sit up and take notice at that? I suppose I did. When he shrugged and said, “So?” my legs went a little limp. I sat down on the couch.
A few hours ticked by. But it was only seconds.
Don stood up. “OK. So, are we done talking?”
“Yeah.” I said. And I went to go check on Emily, because that’s all there was to do.
Gran and I took Emily to the very same playground that I’d scampered through in as a child. We watched her go up to a bigger girl, about five years old, I guessed, and start talking. Soon they were both giggling. Emily’s brown curls and other girl’s straight blond hair waved in the breeze and got in their eyes as they played a rhyming game that started them skipping in circles.
On the bench next to me, Gran said, “She makes friends easily. That’s a gift.”
I watched them.
She kept her eyes on Emily. “You always did, too. Make friends easy. Adjust.”
I stared at the sky, but a question nagged. “What if it isn’t Gramps? Out-there, I mean.”
Gran gave a half-smile that I caught out of the corner of my eye. “I’ve considered that. Had to.”
Emily was dancing now. She’d did make friends easily.
Gran was looking right at me. “And what if it isn’t? I’ll be disappointed, to be sure. Very disappointed.” Her bright blue eyes clouded, and for a moment she looked just like she did the day Gramps died. “But there’s a place out there that’s different from here. Do we look unusual there? Don’t know. Can we taste, smell, hear, see, touch? Don’t know.”
She laughed. “All I know is that I’m willing to go see. To find something-more. It isn’t my time yet. I’m not going to just sit here and wait to die. And if your grandfather’s there, all the better. But it isn’t a deal-breaker.”
I understood. All of a sudden. It surprised me. She was doing everything in her power, taking the necessary steps to unite her with Gramps. I was here, doing nothing, staying with Don. So which one of us was crazy?
“The only thing that could keep me here,” she said as she grabbed my arm, “is you and Emily. You two are everything to me. And if you don’t want me to go, I won’t.”
She gripped harder and looked at me intently before she spoke again.
“I’d even go live in one of those virtual homes if it made you happy.”
Emily and I ran up to the holo-home with some last-minute enhancements for the program. With Gran’s debit disk in my pocket, I was prepared to prepay all the necessary fees. The disk would ensure years of uninterrupted care. Gran and Gramps had amassed a fortune in their day, and there was plenty in the bank to cover every cost, even after the debit disk ran out.
When I got back, I finally sat down with Gran. We talked, we cried, we tried to make sense of it all. And she agreed to go to the holo-home the next day. When I told Don about it later that night, he wanted to be part of it, and his cooperativeness made me suspicious.
“You’ll be there?” I asked. “You sure you want to?”
“Will I get to see it? The holographic house?”
“Of course,” I said. “But why do you care? You have your Sensavision.”
“Yeah, but I want to see the top-of-the-line version.” He winked at me. “And you’ve got full control over her money now, don’t you?”
Gran and I arrived exactly at two and sat on hard orange chairs in the brightly colored lobby to wait for Don. Gran was holding a bouquet of fresh-cut hyacinths. Her head bent; she took a deep breath.
“Are we doing the right thing?” I asked.
She didn’t answer me.
Don arrived late, but he clapped his hands, and said, “Let’s go!” when he got there.
The resident liaison, Alice, led us to the eighteenth floor, chatting about everything and nothing at the same time. My mind raced. Could I do this?
Emily liked the elevator. She pressed her face against the glass and watched the world slip away beneath us. Don watched the numbers change on the readout and avoided looking at me.
My first thought when we reached eighteen was that there had been a mistake. Before us was pure white. It was luminous and beautiful, but I didn’t understand until Alice pressed a few buttons on her handheld control. Two doors appeared. The one on the right, Alice told us, was for the maintenance crew access. Don looked at the control she held and raised an eyebrow at me. He didn’t look at all displeased.
He mouthed the words, “She won’t be able to get out?”
“She’ll never notice,” I whispered, moving closer to him. “To her, it’ll feel like she can go anywhere, do anything, see anyone. What would happen if all the poor demented souls here could come and go as they pleased?” I asked, then added, “Gran’s not one of them, of course.”
“Yeah, right,” he said with a snort.
I pointed toward the remote. “They’re giving me one of those for when I want to visit.”
“And behind this door…” Alice opened it with a flourish.
Gran’s house was there, even better than before. The sights, the sounds, the smells, all perfect.
Even Don was impressed.
“Wow,” he said, “wow.”
Alice whispered, as she backed out the door, “I’ll leave you to settle in here.”
Gran stayed near the door. She looked a little shell-shocked. Emily stayed with her.
I led the way to the kitchen. Don followed, his mouth agape.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“Way more sophisticated than what we have at home.”