How high to touch the light?

Time is the enemy of memory. Time is the lover of memory. Mixing with it, dissolving it, blending it into something else. Understanding. Luke’s memories, sold to Dr. X, sliced and diced by the extractor, were less than what they became, in time. In his mind, in his Spirit, the memories dissolved, were digested, processed, and became understanding. The knowledge of those other hims, of what they shared, and what they lacked. And the understanding of the nature of Bliss, of desire, and even, finally, the answer to the first questions asked of him in the Otherworld, “If you could do anything, …”

The answer, in time, had become clear. He would be a Hardworlder.

But the memories sold to Dr. X had been unstuck from time. Stripped of their context, and in that sense, it was Dr.X and all the future buyers of the mem who were getting ripped off. He hoped, faintly, as weakly as he could bring himself to hope for such a thing in this place, that the value of the story would hold, that some Bliss addict would see the tale or some recycled fragment of it and come to one of his hard-earned realizations, but with less struggle. And maybe one of them would find her. Maybe someone would stop her.

He knew it was a long shot, knew they would chop it up, edit it, use it to make themselves look better, draw more moths to the flame, but he knew it had to be them. Memory rots, as they said on the street, and for good or bad, Dr.X was the only one who had the raw, undissolved mem of each day in the real and the freshest scrapes of the rest of it. It had to be him. It was right, or if not right at least poetic, that it was him.

In the time that had passed since he gave up the story, he had given up hope that it could continue, that maybe some epilogue or happy ending was still waiting somewhere ahead of him. He had never seen her again. Not even a brief glimpse in the Allclub. None of their common acquaintances had seen or heard from her, and he had stopped asking. The world of bliss dens and dead resorts and dive bars that had encompassed their brief life together, and around which he had hovered like a moth waiting to be let back in, fell away from him once the habit was kicked, and now only floated out somewhere in the black, a forgotten dream, a dead wreck, and every second of his new bright life took him further from it forever.

“I can give you fifteen. Make them count,” Klara said.

After the drop into darkness, after the rushing white noise roar had surrounded him, he saw the light, and in this excited move of finality, saw the irony in it. A dim streetlight floating softly in the endless black, about a quarter of a mile away, about as similar to a Blisslight as a cardboard tree in a school play was to a towering oak, but the comparison was inescapable.

He landed on the stripmall sidewalk, its two ends and the building disappearing into shadow in his peripherals, and the sudden gravity took him by surprise. He really was up in his head.

For the first time in ages, he looked around inside the store. Addicts. Not just bliss but lovebugs too, desperate to take their phantom lovers on more vivid vacations or flesh out their false jobs and personalities with purchased mem. Then he saw the back of a mask. A Hardworlder, browsing the shelves, looking for anything to give an edge. A nagging, annoying, cliché thought echoed in his mind for neither the first nor last time.

What if you’ve only replaced one addiction for another? What are you chasing in the Hardworlds? What light are you trying to touch there, huh?

Despite himself, he thought it in her voice. Running from it, trying not to let it sour this glorious final moment before freedom, he jogged to the counter and tapped the bell.

The world went all frosted glass around him, and Mr. O appeared.

“Hey, Sleepy. What can I do for you?”

“Same old shit. What’s the remainder?”

Mr. O told him, and Luke stopped himself from screaming and dancing. He had more than enough to cover it. In fact, it was such a small, unspectacular number, that it was a wonder he had to come in at all. Most merchants would let such a small transaction go remotely, but not Dr.X. Everything had to be face to face mem transfer. Better to snag you with the bright packaging.

“I’ll pay it now,” Luke said, like he was buying gum. Mr. O connected their wallets and smiled.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Well, I guess that’s it.”

“Yep.” Luke stood there, awkwardly, feeling, for some reason, that the occasion called for something else. Mr. O must have felt the same way.

“Sleepy, we’ve known each other a long time,”

Luke couldn’t help but smile, in a “yeah right motherfucker, you don’t know me” way, but the smile soon faded as he thought about it some more. The guy had probably seen every memory Luke had for the last four years and then some. From Mr. O’s point of view, he might feel like he’d known Luke forever.

“And as this is the last time you’ll have any reason to step in here, I just wanted to say good luck and God bless. I always figured you would join up with a decent outfit.”

The visage changed, and the kindly old gas station cashier dissolved, and a mid-thirties guy in pajama pants and One Piece t-shirt held out his hand.

“It’s been cool knowing you.”

Luke reached out his hand and shook it, not buying any of it for a single second. Sure mother fucker, put on another disguise, maybe I’ll think kindly on this place if I ever hit rock bottom again and look for someone to "help me out."

“Thanks bro. Have a good one, and don’t work too hard.”

He turned to leave, and Mr. O called out in his new young millennial voice.

“Oh, Sleepy,” the nickname sounded extra awkward coming from him and Luke turned back around and gave the guy a look. He just kept smiling, and pointed a finger at Luke.

“You hear what happened to Rory?”

The name struck out like lightning, a blade dipped in aced coming from the smug assholes face, tinged with something. She fuck you too?

“No,” was all Luke could muster.

“Oh,” the guy recoiled a bit from Luke’s smoldering anger, and a bolt of guilt went up his gut, despite himself. What if this really was him? What if he was paying something off too?

“Well, she finally got that ticket.”

Luke just stared at him, letting the ramifications build and rattle in his head.

“Uh, just thought I’d let you know. So you wouldn’t be looking for her, you know.”

Luke looked him in the eye, and some rabid part of him screamed that the dude was lying, just trying to keep Luke from finding her, paid off by her even. She was scared he would come find her and drag her into a Hardworld. She knew her day was fucking due!

But, that guttural, childish screaming only confirmed what he saw in the guy’s eyes. He was telling the truth. She really was gone.

“Thanks for the heads up.” He tried to make it sound authentic, to soften some of the previous anger, but his pain slipped out in it, and it sounded like a whine.

Dr.O, or whoever he was, nodded with sad puppy dog eyes like “oh you poor boy” that made Luke want to strangle him, and spoke with a gentleness that seemed beyond his age.

“If it makes you feel better, you’re not the only one who wanted revenge on her. Sorry to be the one to tell you she got away with it.”

Got away with it, Luke thought, and smiled. Whoever’s running Paradise, they’re probably bigger parasites than she could ever imagine. Right about now, she had probably finally met her match.

He smiled and reached into his pocket.

“I don’t know about that.” He held the vial of bliss up to the light. Dr.O watched it like it was C4, but Luke just continued.

“They say this stuff comes from there. I can’t imagine being inside the mother lode is any better for the human condition.”

Dr. O looked from the vial to Luke, and let his jaw droop in a scowl that said, “bro, are you stupid?”

“Yeah, well you know it’s the not having it that causes all the issues.”

Luke’s smile widened. “You sure about that?”

There was nothing to say to that but goodbye. He let the store rush by him, dropped off the concrete outside, and sailed out the chute at the bottom of the void, right into the churning hum of the Allcity.

According to his clock, it had only been a little over five minutes. On his way to the office, he made a pit stop.

The roof was just as he had left it. Like it had been plucked from some city in the Real, cigarette butts and all, and placed in the middle of the dreamscape like a joke. He stood there, where she had found him, looking over the railing, and took out the vial. He had kept it with him the whole time to prove he had really beaten it. To know for sure that it was over.

Watching it glitter, a false light reflecting a false sun, he let himself think about her, really remember her, not with a forced hate but with his natural, reflexive longing. Was she really in Paradise? Could anyone ever even get there? Maybe the scam was just to get them to walk through a door, then lights-out forever, trapped in some box, drip feeding your Real mem to harvesters who sold it to people like Dr.X and Mr. O. Or maybe she had died, in the Real. He had heard that when you die for real, you stop coming to the Otherworld. But, strangely, he had never known anyone to die, and had never known anyone who could reliably tell him that they knew of anyone either.

So, she was out there, in heaven or hell, far away from him, and he would never see her again, just as sure as she would never think of him, and that was that. An ending of the real kind. Not a resolution, just the sudden severance of what had come before.

He smiled at the vial of bliss, and let it fall away, down into the dark haze between the floating plates of the Allcity, trying to believe that when the light vanished, so would his longing, that any pain in any world was ever really gone for good.

“It’s been fifteen minutes,” Klara said, with suspicious acid in her voice.

“It sure has. I’m almost there.”

“Almost doesn’t count, baby.”

“No. It sure don’t.”

She must have heard something in his thoughts, or looked a little deeper than she should have, because her voice softened.

“Ok. See you soon.” Then she was gone.

He looked back one last time at the roof, and promised himself something silent, then kicked off into the sky, becoming just another spirit, leaving the bare concrete behind, like an altar waiting for its next sacrament.