What’s happening? This house never burned, not that I know of, not until the end—
A special effect, I realize—clever, the blistering heat layered in as a sense impression, just as realistic as the coffee I drink in the Archive or the touch and scent of women here, the firelight enough to make me squint but perfectly safe. Safe. I could walk through this fire, enter this house—could still follow Timothy and Hannah—but as I’m pulling myself from the ground, convincing myself that the wind hasn’t been knocked from me, that it’s just a shrewd trick, someone stumbles from the front door, screaming. I can see his black body like a burning worm cocooned in fire. The man stumbles toward me, waving his fiery arms, trailing a curling vein of smoke, a fireball, and I want to escape but am paralyzed. The man seizes the front of my coat and puts his burning face close to mine. I can smell his melting skin, feel the waves of heat.
“I’m very disappointed to see you again so soon,” he says, flames pouring from his mouth like writhing tongues as he speaks. “You’re using the name Kucenic now—”
Mook.
“I told you to leave well enough alone,” he says.
“I don’t understand,” I tell him. “I quit Albion. I told them I quit. I quit—”
“Mr. Blaxton, I’m acting to uphold the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. I believe that part of the right to privacy is that everyone has the right to control their own image. Did you know there are sex tourists who come through the Pittsburgh Archive looking for other people’s memories? Perverts, you understand—complete perversion. Would you be surprised to learn that people have immersed in Pittsburgh and have lived out your memories of sex with your wife? It’s happened, Dominic. There’s an industry of people who search out private sexual encounters that have been archived here and sell them. The user’s sensation is just as wonderful as it is for you. How do you feel about that, Dominic? Wouldn’t it comfort you to have someone like me protecting your memories, the image of your wife? My client has a right to keep people away from her image, and I intend to protect that right—”
“Your client? Who’s your client?”
“You’re a thickheaded young man,” says Mook. “Your wife is dead now—”
The iLux net security flashes red—malware detected—a progress bar fills too quickly to even consider ways to protect myself.
“That’s the worm,” says Mook. “Reissner-Nordström—”
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“You pressed me to do this because you wouldn’t stay away. You wouldn’t listen to me. You did this to her. I’ve unlived your wife, but I can resurrect her. Remember that, Dominic. Be a good boy, and I can reward you one memory at a time—”
Mook blinks out of existence, the house fire’s extinguished, the oceanic silence of the snow-filled night is painful to my ears. What has he done to her? Sift through my memories—I search for Theresa, but she’s nowhere. Through snow, Christmas lights hang from the branches of barren trees. The Spice Island Tea House. Layering, curry and candle wax. Our table, but Theresa’s seat is blurred, smudged like a corruption in sight.
“Theresa—”
She ran some blood work, she will say. She will tell me about the advanced amino test, our little girl, but the only sound I hear is a mumbled deformity of speech emitted from the empty blur, nothing at all like Theresa’s voice, nothing at all. She’s deleted now—Mook’s deleted her—every memory of her, every trace, every piece of her life that I clung to here, blotted and smeared.
Our apartment, the Georgian. Paisley carpets and walls stained the color of tea. Room 208. There is nothing left here, nothing—the foyer empty, only shadows remain.
“Theresa?”
My voice echoes in the emptiness. No one in the living room, no one in the kitchen. Our bedroom’s empty. I lie in bed and wait for her, wait for Theresa to undress in the half-light of the hallway light, to lie with me. I close my eyes to remember her body against mine, to wrap my arms around her and feel her, Theresa, oh God, Theresa, to feel the soft movement of her body, and I reach out my hand and feel her body but when I open my eyes I only see Zhou.
2, 18—
“Slow down,” says Gavril. “Are you all right? Tell me what’s happening—”
“Fuck, man. I’m fucked—”
“Where are you? Can you make it over?”
A Metro bus—connected. Layering, basil curry and candle wax. Forget about everything but my memories of Theresa, but already my memories of her seem thinner. The connection’s weak and the bus jostles and I’m in DC instead of Pittsburgh. Reconnect. The City loads and I access my memories of Theresa but see Zhou. Zhou. I can’t remember my wife anymore. I buzz up to Gavril’s, expecting Twiggy, but another woman opens the door, a pixie with a hentai faerie avatar—pinkish hair and jiggling cartoon breasts. “Upstairs,” she says, sparkling faerie wings and purple lipstick that stinks like grape Kool-Aid. The living room’s filled with Gavril’s models playing a space shooter on the sim, following the Amis guide Invasion of the Space Invaders, storming the terrain of Mars—the apartment’s cast the color of rust. Other models are in the kitchen, snorting lines of cocaine, their faces hideous in the Martian light, one girl’s nose raw with a trickle of blood, but everything’s hilarious and they’re shrieking with laughter. The hentai faerie ignores me for the cocaine, and I wander back to Gavril’s darkroom.
“You look like shit,” he says.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Sugar—”
“Ah fuck, man,” he says. “It’s been ten years, brother—ten years since you lost her. Give this up, Quixote. You can stay on my mother’s farm for as long as you want. Clear your head. Or come to London with me when I go. I’ll pay. Let’s put all this shit behind you—”
“I need to fucking—I just need, Gav, please, you don’t fucking understand—”
“Fuck you, then—”
Two pills of brown and I swallow them whole. “Take it to the kitchen,” he says, “I’m working right now.” Ignoring the coked girls who’ve fallen in a giggling heap beneath the kitchen table, I sit in the corner, on the cool tile, the warped-space sounds of their video game interfering with the immersion—
Autoconnect to Gavril’s Wi-Fi, the burn hits and the Pittsburgh tunnel’s like swimming lights, I’m rushing through and hold my breath until the tunnel ends and I’m hovering midair above three black rivers. I swim down through the air and touch the surface of the river—I pull myself through the skin of water into the dark, descend through the depths to drown. The river swallows me, the water covering over me but I can still breathe, of course I can still breathe—it’s not real, nothing is real. Nothing is real. Looking up at the City through the rippling surface of the river, the lights of Pittsburgh waver like it’s the City that’s been drowned. I close my eyes. I want to die, but the City isn’t set up for suicides, and so when I open my eyes I’m standing in Shadyside, in summer. I’m here—