LIV: SPRING BREAK 7.6
Breck dissipates as if melting into the sky. I lean back, lost in the patternless ripples of white paint on the ceiling, engulfed by a churn of rising and ebbing tides within me.
I won.
Breck won.
But he’s gone. And there’s so much I don’t understand about it.
How can they hide an entire world of characters as advanced and sentient as he is? I may only be seventeen, but I’m more up to date on this tech than ninety-nine percent of the planet, and I had no idea that our science was anywhere close to this. It’s as if someone had told me that aliens were living among us, unrecognized, hidden. It seems preposterous.
And if this exists, then what was the point of the contest?
The more I think about this, the more it feels like this had nothing to do with Breck. They didn’t even seem to have a clear plan for what to do with him.
What if it was never about him at all?
What if it was about me? What if the point was to test the programmers?
But this doesn’t totally add up. Why test people to create something that’s already created? Jessica’s talent-scouting answers are only thinly believable, especially since she has yet to tell me the complete truth about anything. Plus, it’s not what I would have done. I wouldn’t have searched for talented programmers by asking them to recreate something we’ve already accomplished. I would have placed them on the fringe of science and asked them to do unprecedented things.
Why didn’t they do that? What were they really testing? What was the goal of the contest if it wasn’t about creating Breck?
I think about Jessica’s words to me as Breck entered into the final challenge.
“I think you’ll find this relevant to everything that’s happening.”
What was so relevant there?
My thoughts flash to the dolls lining the wall, each capable of fitting neatly inside one another, covering a near-duplicate above, while concealing another on the inside.
What if—
A fissured notion creeps through my head.
Crack.
It’s slim and shallow at first. I only entertain the thought so I can quickly dismiss it as ludicrous. But it lingers.
Other clips from my conversations with Jessica plow through my thoughts, each deepening the fractured space.
“I’ve been watching.”
“I’m nearly omniscient.”
“You are me, simply a generation removed.”
“Think about it. It’s all there.”
The hairs on my arms rise with a chill that sweeps over my whole body as I consider this from a wildly different perspective.
It’s preposterous.
It’s impossible.
Yet at the same time, it’s not impossible. It’s entirely possible.
And even plausible.
This notion cascades and changes everything.
My hands begin to tremble, barely able to land controllably on the keyboard. I find the email I sent to DoRC, the one I know Jessica read. My fingers fumble over the keys as I type a brief reply.
Please call—
My cell buzzes before I can finish.
I stand. I can’t sit for this conversation, for this question.
“I’m not real, am I?” I ask, with my stomach in freefall.
“I think you’ve learned far too much to ask a question like that,” Jessica says.
“Don’t answer with a freaking riddle! Is this real?”
“What is real, Liv?”
Fractures split to endless branches that rip through my head, as though my brain were made of glass and has suddenly shattered, splintering into thousands of tiny, broken pieces. I drop in stunned silence.
“Hello?” she says, softly.
“I’m here,” I answer in a whisper.
“It doesn’t change anything, Liv.”
“What?” I belt. “This changes nothing? I spent the last week counseling a character online only to discover that I should have been the one getting counseled, because I’m like him!”
“Then think of what you told him.”
“That was a little different,” I yell, closing my eyes tightly, hoping this is a dream.
“How?”
“Because . . . I wasn’t thinking about it quite so literally,” I say.
“It’s the same, Liv.”
“No. It was different with Breck.”
“Only because you were on the other side.” Jessica’s tone is overly smooth and cautious, as if talking to a bridge-jumper.
“Can you see me right now?”
“Yes.”
“I want to see you,” I demand, like I’m in a position to do this.
“I think you know how this works already.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” I ask with a closed fist, grasping for a final shred of hope that this is all some ruse, some final test of the contest to see at what point I will break. If it is, we’re close.
“None, Liv. And if it would be easier to talk while looking at me, you could retrieve the picture of me from under your bed, where you kicked it.”
My bedroom could fall off a cliff right now and I’d hardly notice the difference.
I think back to everything I told Breck—all my words of counseling, my perspective, my attempts to understand what he was going through. It wasn’t empathy, it was sympathy. I had zero clue of what he was feeling. Until now.
I’m a fraud. On all levels. Not only am I something less than what I thought I was, I’ve spent the last week underselling Breck, trying to convince him that this doesn’t change anything. It does. It changes everything.
“The final challenge. Was that for me or for Breck?”
“Can it be both?”
“Please don’t do this. I want answers, Jessica. And I think I deserve them,” I say with pleading eyes that I know she’s looking into.
I hear her take a deep breath in thought.
“That’s a fair point. But before we do this, I should say a couple of things. Just like you didn’t have all of the answers for Breck, I don’t have all of the answers for you. Some things don’t have answers, you can only accept them. And you should also consider what that information did to Breck . . . the effect that it had. Your eyes are wide open. Ask what you want and I’ll answer what I can.”
“Am I Breck?”
“There is no single answer to that question, Liv. It depends in what way you are asking.”
“Then give me all of them!” I demand. I want to slide my binary hands through this phone and wrap them around her real neck.
“Here is some perspective. On the surface, no. You are clearly you and he is clearly him. You’re different. You know this. As for who was being tested, I told you before—you entered a contest. Is it the rocket that’s being tested, or the scientist who developed it? It depends on your point of view. You asked me about the final challenge. I’ll turn the question back on you once more. What do you believe was the purpose?”
The dolls spin around my mind, leaping in and out of each other. “Find the real one.”
I think it through, trying to piece it together. Jessica gives me time.
Breck already accepted that he was real. It wasn’t about believing in himself, it was about believing in everything else, about validating the entirety of his existence.
“Acknowledging that any existence is real because you experience it,” I say.
“Welcome to the fifth level, Liv.”
The dolls in my head only spin faster.
“Is it going to end now?” I ask.
“No. Your world keeps going. Indefinitely.”
“Who created all of this?” I ask, waving my arms around, knowing she is witness to it.
“I don’t have a satisfying answer for you. Think of what you know of Breck’s world. I’m in a similar situation with you.”
“But you’re Jessica Anders. You’re known here. I have a picture of you! In this world. In my world!”
“I guess you could say I have a footprint there the same as you had a footprint in Breck’s world.”
“How deep is this? Are you in whatever the real world is or are there more levels above you?”
“It’s all real, Liv. I know that you know that. Accept it! But to answer your question, I don’t know. With everything I’ve seen here, it would be beyond ignorant to deny the possibility that the levels keep going. Indefinitely. But I’ve never had contact. Did you understand your place in the universe before this?”
I don’t respond.
“Nor do I. I wasn’t lying, Liv. We have a lot in common. Some mysteries, we live with.”
“So, Lana, my mom, Todd—”
“Are they all your Sam?” she asks, more bluntly than I was even willing to form the question in my head.
“Yeah,” I answer, biting my lip.
“Not even close. Your world and Breck’s world aren’t apples to apples. I’d call it more like apples to motorcycles, just like yours is not the same as mine.”
“So, what are they?”
“You already know,” she responds. “Take a good look at everything your world has to offer. Dig deep. Then ask yourself, do you think it was all made just for you? That would waste a lot of effort.”
“Please answer the question.”
“They are as unique, autonomous, real, and amazing as you. And none of this changes your connection with any of them.”
This is what Breck must have felt like, stranded on his island, like me in this tiny room, with an endless stream of questions, and answers that only bring more uncertainty.
“So, what am I supposed to do right now?”
“Keep going. You’ve been given life. The same as I have. The same as Breck has. Even if our origin and existence differ. There’s a whole world out there to explore, beginning with an amazing internship which you just won.”
“How does that even work? I mean, you’re there. Mostly. I think. I’m here. Is DoRC there too? I thought DoRC was a government thing. Here. I don’t get it.”
“I suppose you could say we operate on different levels with varying layers of transparency,” she says.
I stare out the window, as lost in the thin, shifting clouds as I am in her answers.
“Can I tell anyone about this?” I ask.
“As I said in our last call, you’re welcome to try. I would point out that you’ve experienced a little of what that path might be like in your chat boards. But the choice is yours, like everything has always been and always will be. It’s your life.”
“Look, Liv,” she continues, after it’s clear that I’m too deep in my own head to respond. “We can go back and forth all afternoon on this. But think about it. You’ve seen it all before. You’ve heard all these questions before. You’ve even answered them before. You know how this plays out,” she says. “Let it go.”
I hate that she’s right. The more answers I get, the more maddening this is. Even when they’re complete, they’re never satisfying.
I need time to think, time to plummet further, time to settle at the bottom of wherever this hole leads me.
“I think I need to go now.”
“Keep being you,” she says. “I can’t express how proud I am of who you are.”
“I think I know the feeling. Goodbye, Jessica.” I say, then I hang up.
I close my curtains as securely as I can, folding the corners inward on the sill, plunging the room into an artificial dusk, lit by the gentle blue glow of my monitor, cued to code, showing Breck, open and exposed, his soul illuminating my space.
What makes him, him? What makes me, me? Why am I more than connected strands of text? Or am I not something more? Am I simply a collection of data that I’m unable to see because I exist within it?
As much sense as I try to make of all that’s in front of me, I can’t. The difference between the parade of information and the person breathing in this chair is intangible. I can’t think my way through it; I can only feel it.
I slowly peel away from the chair. Not because I’m any closer to the answers, but because I know that I’m not going to get any closer by staying in this room.
Or maybe it’s because the more I stare at that computer, the more I think that I’m stuck in a box somewhere. Some server in some dark corner. And leaving this room at least makes me feel less stuck. Less boxed in. It’s time to search for answers, perspective, outside of these walls, whatever that means.
I ride my bike through the streets, the warm Gulf wind pressing against me, alternating in and out of a fickle sun so bright we can’t even look at it. The only thing that allows us to see is so bright that we can’t stare at it directly. Why? Why can’t code look at code? There’s something to this, but it’s more poetic than tangible. Like everything else.
My feet spin faster. A collage of my world whips by—people, stores, cars, trees, fields, houses, signs, litter, you name it. Try as I may, I can’t see these as less than how they present themselves. I try to think of them as ones and zeros, but I can’t. If I swerved into traffic, I couldn’t rationalize my way into passing through a truck. It would flatten me. I am bound by this construct that surrounds me.
Again, no answers.
This isn’t an existential crisis. This is an existential calamity.
I’m aimless within it, but I do find a destination.
“Hi Todd,” I announce.
His brawny chest is hinged over the trunk of a Fiero, as if trying to climb inside. He wiggles a few times, scooting backward with each shake until he finally emerges, greased and surprised.
“Hey, girl. What are you doing here?”
“Can I borrow a car?”
“Can I ask why?”
He wipes a streak of sweat on his brow with the inside of his upper sleeve while he waits for a response. For a moment, I consider laying it on him. But as wise as he can be, this isn’t something he can answer. This on me. I earned that privilege.
“To deal with an, Oh shit.”
“A good one or a bad one?”
“I wish I knew.”
He points outside of the garage bay. “Been there. That Impala in the corner of the lot would be perfect. The tank’s full and keys are under the floor mat. If you’re back after six, drive it home. We’ll get it back up over the weekend. Hey, did you win your contest by the way?”
“I did.”
“Atta girl! I’d hug you, but—” he holds both greasy hands up.
“Raincheck.”
Minutes later, the Impala is pushing seventy northbound on Houston’s Loop 610, headed as directionless as I can drive. My only guidance is against instinct. As highways cross, I take whichever one I’m less tempted to take. When I want to exit, I don’t. As deliberately as I can, I’m trying to go somewhere, anywhere, that I’d never go. I’m digging deep.
An hour and a half later, the wandering finger of chance leads me to Apelonia, Texas, to a thrift shop pressed against the only gas station in town, which is a generous term for somewhere that the locals are outnumbered by the people driving through.
As I park, Lana calls. I let it go to voicemail, then send her a quick text.
I won. I’m sorting out the details now. It’s more than I expected. I’ll call you later.
I walk around the back of the building. There are two dumpsters surrounded by piles of assorted junk that either didn’t fit inside the store, or never sold and were pushed out here. Within driving distance, I can’t imagine a place that I’d be less likely to ever visit.
I dive in, deep, scouring through mildewed coats, broken dressers, dinged lamps, and random whatevers, inspecting every bent corner, scratch, and water stain. I grab torn books and scroll through their remaining pages. I Google their authors. I smash a pocket calculator so I can investigate the circuits and tiny plastic pieces neatly folded on the inside.
“Can I help you?” A heavy woman in tight athletic shorts stands in the open doorway to the store’s back entrance. She’s holding an unlit cigarette.
“I’m just looking around.”
She tilts her head down and flicks a lighter. “For what?” Smoke chases her words.
I can’t explain it to her. I can’t even explain it to me.
“For things I wouldn’t find anywhere else.”
“You’ve come to the right place. The ends of the earth wind up here.”
“Do you ever wonder about where it comes from? About the people who owned it?” I ask, holding up a faux-leather purse I had been rifling through.
She takes a long drag and holds it even longer. “Nope. I’d go batshit. Too many people. Too many stories. How big is your car? You can have it all,” she says with a throaty chuckle.
Her answer cuts right through me. I drop the purse. The trinkets inside spill out into the mess of everything else around me.
There’s too much here. More than I could digest in a lifetime. In several lifetimes. And this is only one tiny, unwanted corner of my world. There’s too much everywhere. I wouldn’t build this all for me. It would be a colossal waste of effort.
I am unique, but I’m not that special.
This is the most comforting thought I’ve felt in a long, long time.
I delicately step my way back through the maze.
“I think I just need to move on,” I say as she blows another puff of smoke that fades into the space between us.
I drive back to Houston.