More real than Real
Gradie’s apartment faced the highway over a sliver of woodland clinging to a storm-drain creek. Foot beaten trails cut across the rough grass and tall weeds. Every time he looked out the window, some new scrap of trash, the bright white of a fast-food bag or the shine of a beer can, had sprouted like fungi. He never saw the people that dropped them. He never saw anyone. Living here felt like flying through space in a drywall box, the atmosphere long evaporated into the washed-out sky.
The “luxury” apartments on the higher ridge across the highway showed no signs of life beyond a few warm yellow squares at night. There was a housing development next to his complex, but he could only see the roofs if he looked for them, rough shapes of sandpaper tiles peeking through the branches of a live oak.
His job was less than half a mile down the highway, but despite spending hours staring out the second-story office windows, he never saw any sign that his apartment even existed. Just strip malls and car dealerships across the six dusty lanes of roaring concrete. Once, he had dreamed of jumping out the window and flying straight up into the air. There had been no sign of his home and nothing but the same scenery out to the edge of the world.
The Wal Mart and it’s suckling strip malls where he bought everything he didn’t order online was about a mile off the highway, and his best friend’s house another mile past that, but he hadn’t seen him face to face in a month.
Most days he went straight home, worked out, got online, maybe chipped away at one of his hundred half-finished short stories or the big space opera novel, then a sudden sparse sleep and right back down the highway to work. The weekends were just longer spaces in between.
So, he sat at the window, when not staring at a screen, watching the headlights stream by, trying to believe there was something more out there beyond his little box.
He blew the last of the cigarette out through the bent corner of the mesh and finished the whiskey sour. It was almost one in the morning. Officially Monday. The whine of his computer fan died and left him in the silence, laying on the bed staring up at nothing. He had tacked thick sheets over the windows and the room was cave dark. They did the trick. He fell asleep seamlessly.
He was back in Michael’s craft, drink still in hand, with Michael still in the same spot, watching him. The two fragments of memory on either side of his waking day fused together, and his entire life in the Real, faded, softened, until it felt like a dream. He knew, the way knowledge in a dream came without reason, that just as no time had passed in the Otherwrorld, no time would pass in the Real while he was here.
“Wow.” He had spent his entire day in the Real without ever knowing this place existed, or remembering what had happened to him here. Now that he had returned, it was like he had never left. He felt there were two of him; one in the real, doomed to never know this place exists, and another, here, omniscient in comparison.
A sadness came over him. A feeling of separation from that other him. Seeing himself move about the real world, ignorant of himself, he felt pity, longing, struck through with something like regret.
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“It gets easier,” Michael said, standing, sensing Gradie’s thoughts. “At first it feels like you’re split in two, but over time you find the common ground. The element of yourself that remains constant. What we call your spirit.”
“So, you never remember this place? In the real world?”
“No. It’s not possible once you get down to it. There would be all kinds of violations of causality if you could remember, because of how time works.”
“What do you mean?”
“Forget it.” Michael waved out to the window. “For now, it’s better if you just stretch your legs. Get a feel for this world and enjoy yourself.”
“Enjoy myself doing what?” He remembered the powerless feeling on the rooftop and the embarrassment of the club.
Whatever you want.” Michael said.
“Don’t I have to pay? I thought you said memories were like money here.”
“Yea, but we use a unit, mem, that approximates—”
“What if I don’t want to sell my memories?”
Michael studied him again.
“There’s still plenty of free fun to be had, but you might change your mind when you see what’s for sale.”
“How do I know what my memories are worth? Won’t I get ripped off?” It seemed a stupid thing to be concerned with. Shouldn’t a dreamworld be without limits? Maybe that’s how you knew it was real.
“You can easily find a Mem trader. Might want to shop around for the best price, though. Like I said, lots of freebies. Especially for a newborn like you. They like to get you hooked if they can.”
The world outside rose in the window as the craft descended to the planet surface, glittering and chaotic. Gradie remembered the Allclub, what those other people had felt like. Like they wanted to get inside him and take what they could find.
“Why did you do this? Help me?” He asked.
“Everyone who comes to this place gets a hand at the beginning. Kind of an unwritten rule, I guess. Paying it forward.”
Gradie didn’t buy it.
“And?”
Michael smiled. “And,” He faced Gradie squarely. “I think I could use you.”
“For what?” But he already knew.
“On the team. I found you in a Hardworld, which is rare. I think you would take to the work naturally.”
Gradie felt himself sinking. Of course. A world of endless possibility and freedom and the leader of a band of gun toting interdimensional assassins asks him to join the team.
“I am going insane.” It didn’t ring as true now, after a day back in his own skin, with the gap of memory between the two versions of himself, and in the persistence of the hallucination. He couldn’t believe he was going crazy, but it felt stupid to believe it was real. Michael brushed off his crisis with a nod.
“Right, still getting used to it. That’s why I said to take some time to explore, get a feel for this world. Here.”
Michael handed him a business card that read:
LIQUID LIGHT
HARDWORLDERS * SEEKERS
Crystal Fountain Tower, F96 Suite LL
14:30 X 35, Allcity
The text seemed to be carved out of the card, and through the cuts, he saw water reflecting a bright sunlight, as if the card was a portal to a midday ocean.
“What is this?”
“My card. Press the text if you change your mind, and it’ll call me.”
A door opened in the wall and the Allcity glittered outside under a high noon sun. It took a moment for his mind to organize what he saw into near or far, massive or small, moving or just vibrating in place. It all seemed liquid. He felt liquid. Like if he went out there he would melt into it. Once again, Michael seemed to read his mind.
“Don’t panic, nothing out there can hurt you. But understand, the mind is not confined to its shell. Here it can touch the world directly.”
Which means the world can touch my mind.
The idea of that writhing landscape slipping into his head like electrified doubt or living memory terrified him, but something else, a hope for what it could be, urged him on.
“All right. See you later.” He leaned forward and fell out the door.