BRECK: SIMULATION #37
My head is pressed against the table, and it is light. It was dark outside in the last moment I remember.
If there was an explosion, I do not recall it. There was no flash or heat. I was talking with Sam, then I closed my eyes.
“Sam?” I ask, as I lift my head and look to the other side of the table. He is not there.
I look around. He is nowhere.
My searching pauses as I become distracted by my own thinking. It is the same sensation as yesterday morning. Visions of places and things that do not fit into this town move in and out of my mind, like experiences that I never actually experienced. Like the penguins. And I cannot remember exactly what they were, only that it was very different than here.
Trying to understand this hurts my head. I have never before had a physical reaction to thinking about anything.
The waiter is no longer the same person as when it was dark. But I ask him nonetheless if he knows where Sam is. It’s a red shirt response.
“I do not know. I never saw anyone with you.”
I return my attention to the table and notice there is a device. I believe it is a phone. This is odd. I do not recall seeing this moments ago, and there is no one nearby who could have left it there. I must not have noticed it.
I don’t know what to do with it, so I examine it and give Sam a few minutes to return to the table. He does not appear.
It is time to move forward. I stand. The phone remains on the table. It is not mine, so I leave it there.
As I move toward the street, my thoughts remain on the phone. I consider the possibilities and conclude that Sam probably left this to contact me. I return, put it in my pocket, and walk away.
LIV: SPRING BREAK 4.0
“What’s wrong?” Mom asks. She’s driving today.
“I didn’t sleep much,” I answer, without opening my eyes. I finished the programming changes twenty minutes ago and was hoping to catch a ten-minute nap on the ride to the store.
“Because of Lana? Todd told me she’s moving.”
“Sort of. I had to make some changes to the program—” I start to explain before I’m interrupted.
“You stayed up all night on the computer?”
“Half the night.” I consider explaining how it’s all connected and opt against it. It’s too complicated, and it involves Breck.
The tick of the blinker counts the tense moments, appearing louder with each shake of Mom’s head.
“I don’t understand you. Your best friend is moving, you need to work today, and you decide to spend all night on the internet.”
“Lana wanted time by herself,” I explain.
“You’re still working all day at the store.”
“I’m planning on it.”
“Good. Let’s put three Saturns out front.”
I nod and shut my eyes once more, leaving all conversation to the morning radio hosts. When we arrive at the store, Mom’s instructions are brief, and my acknowledgment is even briefer.
“Got it.”
Soon, I’m standing alone in the parking lot. Overnight clouds have cleared, leaving the faint smell of wet concrete wafting through the crisp spring air. If the lot had a thermostat, I wouldn’t touch it. It’s perfect.
The vacant row of Saturns lay upright, perfectly balanced without me. I stare at them as though they were the opponent in a different contest.
I am not coordinated.
Lana at least had the advantage of someone there to hold her. I roll the ball next to the curb, where there is a concrete pillar supporting the awning. The brick column is too thick to fully wrap my arms around, so I grasp the squared corners and gently place one foot, then the other on the Saturn.
Instantly, my feet slide away, until the gyroscope inside corrects, quickly thrusting it and me back into the curb and pillar. Rinse and repeat. If the goal is to attract attention, mission accomplished. If the goal is to humiliate me, mission accomplished. I look like someone humping a strip mall post.
With no safe way to exit, I eventually reach an impasse where I’m hugging the pillar on wobbly feet.
“Need a hand?”
I don’t risk turning. I know the voice.
“Please.”
Lana wraps an arm around my waist. As I lift one of my feet, the Saturn rockets away and I tumble backward into Lana, where she returns my favor from yesterday, giving me a soft landing as we both crash into the pavement below.
“You should stick with programming,” Lana whimpers.
“Tell my mom.”
I stand then help Lana to her feet.
“I got your text. Have you tried the voice app yet?” Lana asks, wrapping unpainted nails around the perimeter of her hair, checking to ensure it’s still bunned.
“Nope. My cell is in quarantine. I was waiting for you. Is Sam still MIA?”
“I checked before I left, and he wasn’t there. There’s not a way to see him?”
“No. I don’t think they were supposed to separate.”
Her lips twist. “Is Breck even going to know what a phone is?”
“He wasn’t, until I programmed it in,” I answer. “Have you talked with your dad about this yet?”
“No. I figured we’d try it out first.” She softly shrugs her shoulders. “And maybe it’s a dumb idea anyway.”
“You say this after I spent all night programming it?”
“Brainstorming, right? We don’t have to do it. I don’t want to mess up your contest,” Lana offers, more apologetically than sincerely. We both know we’re going to try this.
“I didn’t program for hours and not get excited about it. I’m curious. But we can’t help him.”
“Understood.”
“Really. We can’t help. At all. I don’t know how they monitor all of this, but I’m sure they do. No hints. Questions only.”
“I wouldn’t know what hints to give.”
“I know. That’s what most reassures me that you won’t.”
She feigns a smile and hands me her cell. We walk around the corner, out of view from the front of the store.
BRECK: SIMULATION #37.1
I am scanning the streets for Sam when the phone in my pocket begins to vibrate. I pull it out and unfold it. When I do, a faint voice speaks.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” I respond, placing it to my ear.
“Who is this?”
“This is Breck. Who is this?” I ask.
“My name is Liv.”
It is a higher pitched voice, which I believe is a female. I do not recall ever knowing anyone named Liv. I do not recognize her voice, either.
“Do I know you, Liv? I do not recognize your name.”
“Right. You don’t really know me. But I know who you are and that’s why I called.”
“Do you know where Sam is?” I ask.
“No.”
“Are you calling to help me find the tunnel?” I ask.
“That would make a lot of sense. But no, I don’t have new information for you.”
I step into the entry space of a candy store, away from the noise of the street. A lone woman behind the counter weighs a bag of licorice, ignoring me the way that other red shirts do.
“Then why did you call me, Liv?”
“I wanted to talk?”
“Is that a question?” I ask.
“No, sorry. I meant it as a statement. I want to talk,” she says.
“What do you want to talk about?” Before she responds, I think of another question. “Are you wearing a green or red shirt?”
“Ha! That’s perfect. Of course you would ask me that!”
“I do not understand.”
“I’m sorry. I’m saying that based on what you’ve seen, that’s a reasonable question.”
“So are you?”
“No. I’m wearing a gray shirt.”
Her responses do not make sense. I wonder if I am supposed to seek further clues from this conversation.
“Do you know where the tunnel is?”
“I wish that I did. But even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”
“Why would you not be able to tell me?”
Liv does not respond immediately. I give her time to answer, the same as I do with Sam.
“Wow, this is harder than I thought. I wasn’t expecting all of your questions. I guess I should have,” Liv says. I hear a separate voice in the background.
“Dude, ask him some questions!”
“Is that another person?” I ask.
“Yes, this is Lana,” the other voice answers. “I’m Liv’s friend. Can we talk about, like, what you’re thinking?”
“I do not know how to answer that question. I think about many different things.”
“What are you thinking right now?” Lana asks.
“That I do not know what I am supposed to learn from this conversation.”
“What do you think you’re supposed to learn?”
“That question does not make sense. If I thought I knew, I would know.”
“That’s awesome,” Lana says.
“I don’t understand your response.”
“I mean, I like your answer. Okay. Another question. So, what’s it like living in your world?”
“Lana! He doesn’t—” The first girl I spoke with raises her voice, then the remainder of what she says is muffled.
While I wait for the two girls to finish, I consider the question, which again doesn’t make much sense. My world? There is only this world. I wonder if they mean my town. As in, how is it to live in this town? I don’t live in this town, but I am currently in this town, and I am living. This is a possible interpretation. I arrive at this conclusion when she begins speaking again.
“This is Liv again. What Lana means is what is it like in the town where you are?”
“That is how I understood the question,” I reply.
“Good!”
“One description would be confusing,” I answer. “But I believe that also describes the entire series of challenges, so perhaps a better description of the town specifically would be reflective.”
“Reflective? What does that mean?” Liv asks.
“It means that everything mirrors some version of something else. Streets, stores, people. None of them look exactly the same, but they seem like rearranged pieces of one another.”
“What do you think about that?”
“It’s only an observation. I don’t know what to think about it. What should I think about it?”
“Maybe you’re not supposed . . . I mean, maybe you’re not there yet, and you need more observations.”
“Yes, that is my plan.”
“And what—” Liv stops abruptly.
Someone screams. “What are you doing?!” It is not the voice of either one of the two girls. And again, I don’t recognize it.
“We’re just—” one of the girls answers. I believe it is Liv.
“Not doing the only thing you’re supposed to be doing!” the voice shouts back.
“We have to go,” one of them says to me with quick words.
She hangs up.
I do not know what to make of this experience, but I’m left again with the same unusual sensation that emerged ever since Sam and I left the room. A preference. I want them to call me again.
LIV: SPRING BREAK 4.1
“Hi, Lana. I need to talk to Liv for a moment. In private,” Mom says, propping the front door open with a firm foot.
I pass Lana her phone back and follow Mom inside.
“You are in charge of the store right now. You! You’re the person responsible for all of this. I’m the person who has been on the phone with a financial consultant for the last forty-five minutes.” She cups her hands to her face, plugging the corners of her eyes. She draws in a deep breath. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I also know you were listening at the door yesterday, so it’s not any big secret. You need to understand what’s at stake here. The store needs to make money. If it doesn’t, we’re in trouble. All of us. I’m not asking you to fix it. I’m just telling you what is going on. So, when I ask you to put forth some effort to sell some toys, I’m not doing it to yank you out of your bedroom for the day. I need your help. Got it?”
I nod.
“Then why were you nowhere in sight and on the phone instead of doing what I asked? I had to go find you. This was your idea. You were the one who suggested it!”
I’m ashamed. I wanted to help today. That is why I suggested the original idea. I want her to know this. I decide to give my explanation a shot. Maybe she’ll get it.
“We were talking with Breck, the character I programmed, because—”
“You were talking with a stupid computer instead of working?! I am going to lose my mind.”
“It’s because—”
“Stop. Please! It doesn’t matter I have another call with another banker to try to figure this mess out. If Lana wants to stay, that’s fine. Have her ride around.”
She stomps toward the back office and disappears with her signature thunderous door closure. I walk back outside.
“I’m scratching off moving into your living room from my backup plans,” Lana says, perched atop one of the Saturns.
I drop to the curb and don’t answer. I want to scream. It’s really freaking hard to tell someone why you’re doing something when they always cut you off after six words. And that’s not the worst part about this. Mom can be dramatic, but I think there’s more to it this time. How much trouble are we in? I imagine myself sleeping on Todd’s couch, in his apartment. My stomach sinks.
“Hey, are you okay?” Lana rolls in front of me.
“I don’t think so.”
“What did she say to you?”
I quickly recap, which isn’t much different than what I overheard yesterday. But hearing it again from my own lips makes it feel more real, more threatening. Lana hops off the Saturn and sits next to me.
“What did she mean by trouble? Lose the store? Lose the house? Worse?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t get specific.”
“You think she was exaggerating?” Lana asks.
“No. There’s something different about her right now. I mean, you know her . . . she’s freaking intense. But not usually like this.”
Lana puts an arm around me and leans her head against mine. It reminds me of the day we met, the first day of third grade. I found her alone in a corner of the playground at recess. She had skinned her knee and was crying. I asked if she wanted help and she nodded. So I ran through all I could offer. Get a Band-Aid? No. Get a teacher? No. Help her go back inside? No. At last, I told her I didn’t know how to help. Then she asked, “Can I have a hug?”
Lana knows I’d never ask for a hug. But it’s what I need right now. Or at least my best friend’s arm around my shoulder.
“Sometimes it sucks to be right,” she says.
“Yeah. It’s terrible. Sometimes I wish it were all code. I can fix that. I don’t know what I can do to help here.”
“We can start by trying to sell a few of these things. It’ll at least make it better today.” She stands and offers her hand to pull me up.
I grab a nearby Saturn and roll it toward Lana. “Help me climb on.”
“I know something that’ll make you feel better.”
I pause, poised to hop. “What’s that?”
“Before you kill yourself falling off that thing, can we talk about how cool that conversation with Breck was? He was like a person.”
The last five minutes may be the longest stretch in the past six weeks that I have not thought at all about Breck. I miss talking about him already.
“Yeah, it felt pretty authentic,” I admit.
“I thought he’d sound more like a robot.”
“I like the voice I used. It almost feels natural.”
“No, not just his accent. It was good, but he was still a little Siri-like. What I mean is the way he talked. The way he . . .thought. It didn’t feel like we were talking to a computer. He asked more questions than we did, like he was actually curious.”
Her reaction feels nearly as good as talking with him. As much as I’ve kept my chin up, a month of failures has taken a toll.
“He’s programmed to learn,” I say. I feel nearly as much satisfaction in her reaction as I did in talking with him. My smile would be far more than half-wide right now if my thoughts weren’t torn. As much as I want to focus everything on Breck, my mom’s warning won’t leave my head.
“How many challenges are there?” Lana asks.
“Four.”
“He’s only made it through one, and he sounds like this. I changed my mind. I don’t think this is a dumb idea anymore. We need to have my dad talk to him. He’s going to love Breck.” Lana slaps a firm palm on my shoulder, locking our arms together. “Now hop on and let’s start selling these freaking things. One, two, three . . .”
BRECK: SIMULATION #37.2
I replay my memory of the phone conversation and try to assess what I can learn from it. I still can’t think of anything. Perhaps it was another decoy intended to distract me.
I continue my plan, which is to find someone in a green shirt, then ignore their instructions. But I have no idea where to find this person, so I explore in random directions, without any pattern or destination.
This is not much different than yesterday with Sam. We merely explored, as I am doing now. But there is something different about doing this on my own. I would prefer that Sam was here with me. Not because he would help, but because I want his company. Not only is it still strange to have a preference, but it is also strange to have this preference. He did not listen to me yesterday, which prompted a different, unpleasant sensation.
As I pass streets without any sign of green shirts, I become consumed by wondering what these recent sensations are and what they mean. They are not physical feeling. If my hand were on fire, I would experience pain. This is similar, but without any physical cue. It is as if I have some kind of pain, but inside.
It is a feeling, I decide. But not in the way that I have ever defined this. I had understood a feeling on the inside as a synonym to an acknowledgment. For example, lonely was an acknowledgment that a person was alone. Or frustration was an acknowledgment that there was a barrier in the way of a goal.
These definitions are shifting.
Is this how others have always experienced these feelings? Why have I not? Or, am I changing beyond what others are? This seems unlikely, but so does opening a cabinet to unlock a door on the other side of a room.
I am hardly aware of anything I am passing. This immersion within my mind is too new, too consuming. It is in some ways intriguing and in other ways distressing, both of which I now define as far more than acknowledgments.
This lasts until something green catches my attention.
She stands on a corner in a long green dress, flapping in sporadic gusts of wind from a narrow corridor behind her.
“Do you know where the tunnel is,” I ask.
“Of course. It is not far from here. Maybe a fifteen-minute walk. You will need to go down this street until,” she continues with her instructions, which I ignore. They are as complicated as they have been with all other green-shirted people.
When she finishes, I ask, “Can you step to the side so that I can enter the alley behind you?”
“Why do you want to go there?”
“I believe you are lying,” I tell her.
She smiles, then steps aside.
I proceed into the alley. The temperature drops. It is not cold, but cooler than the hot streets only a few yards away. It is not the breeze, but the area itself. I glide my hand along one of the walls. It is cool to the touch.
As I move farther inward, the temperature falls further. I sense I’m walking down a long ramp, until it ends at a door.
I open it and enter, finding a narrow stairwell leading farther down. I descend and it leads me to a dimly lit underground corridor.
Is this the tunnel?
There’s only one direction to walk. My footsteps are the only thing I hear for the next ten minutes, until I encounter another stairwell. I ascend. With each step, the temperature climbs, until I find another door. I open it and emerge into an enclosed plaza with towering walls on all sides. Along three of the walls are dozens of doors. And along the wall opposite my door is a tunnel at least twenty feet high, leading into a mountain behind it.
I am the only person in the plaza.
LIV: SPRING BREAK 4.2
I survived the Saturn. Apparently, I am coordinated enough to ride it. Lana and I spent the morning zipping around and trying to attract attention. In Lana’s words, we were “basically human inflatable tube people.”
Between our riding and the posts online, we had plenty of visitors. As morning turned to afternoon, there was even a short line to try it. I stopped counting when we reached twelve people.
Lana left in the early afternoon and Mom came out to help. She gave me an I-told-you-so look, which was quickly thwarted when a man—graying and at least a decade older than my mom—asked her if we sold them online. She firmly said we do not.
Despite the number of visitors, the day was a flop as we sold just one Saturn. It was the customer’s birthday, which also meant she got ten percent off.
I knock tentatively at the office door.
“It’s open.”
Mom is slumped over, staring at a spreadsheet with numbers too small to read. A bottle of wine and a wet glass linger at her side, amidst scattered papers.
“I tried today, Mom.”
I’d never thought this was the solution, but I did believe it could be at least a step in the right direction. But all we did was turn Renaissance into a free amusement park.
“I know you did.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Apparently nothing. Absolutely nothing.” She grabs the empty glass and watches the last remaining drops slide across the bottom.
“Do you have access to the old website, the one where you tried to sell online?”
“Stop it with the website. What we have now works. I’ve updated all of the pictures too. If anyone wants to find us online, we’re there.”
“Maybe—” I start, as she narrows eyes away from the empty vessel and bores them into me. She knows where this is headed. I do too, but I have to try do something.
“Do you know what the definition of insanity is?” she asks.
“No.”
“Trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
“That’s why I want to try something different.” I think of Breck. I’m essentially quoting what he told Sam. There’s some warped milestone in there, but I’m too focused on this conversation to fully appreciate it.
“It’s not different. We tried it. Why would anyone come to our little site to buy it online? And for more money. There’s no reason to.”
“But maybe it wasn’t done the right way. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Well, that site has been gone for years, so I don’t know.”
“There are ways to find it online. I can look.”
“The answer’s not in a computer, Liv. Look around you. This is a store. There were people here today. Lots of them. We’re not doing something right, but it’s not online. It’s here. We need to figure it out here. And if we don’t, there’s not going to be a here.”
She waits in silence, giving me the chance to respond. I don’t. The invitation is to argue—not debate.
“I’ll close the store. If you can get a ride, you can go,” she finishes. “Let’s try setting tables up outside tomorrow. Maybe if we make more things visible.” Her words fade without conviction.
I call Lana from the phone by the register.
“Are you kidding? I’m leaving now. I’ve been waiting for you to get home. I talked to Dad. He’s in. Or he’s at least willing to listen. I’ll be there in ten.”
I take a seat on the curb outside, watching clouds slowly shape-shift on the horizon, as if highlighting the temporary existence of each moment, reminding me that in a short period of time I could be without either my best friend, my home, or both.
Lana arrives before I think myself over the edge.
“How’d the rest of the day go?” she asks as I enter.
“Not great. Can I borrow your cell?”
She grabs it from the center console and holds it in front of her face to unlock it. “Sure. Why?”
“Do you think selling online would help?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Why would someone go there instead of Amazon?”
“To support a local business?”
“Sounds like that didn’t help today,” she says, to which I nod. “Still, it wouldn’t hurt. It’s not like you’d sell less.”
I Google and scroll as she talks. Got it. LongAgo.org. I knew there was a place that stored old website data. I find the old Renaissance site. Not everything loads right, but it’s enough to confirm what I remember; it was terrible. There’s no order to the content, it’s full of annoying features like see price when added to cart, and it looks only slightly more appealing than an Excel doc.
“Are you going to build her a new site?”
“It’s a thought.”