“Here again, eh? How’s the metal bar coming? My-head-wise, that is?”
He had opened his eyes, again, to see Colin and Kris sitting on the ground with him. It was like no time had passed at all, but also like that last time had been a long time ago.
“No worse, but no progress, I’m afraid,” Colin said.
“How long as it been?”
“Four days since the accident.”
“Not too bad. Is it, um, is it more stuck than they thought?”
The virtuality seemed thinner and greyer, and the clouds were more like wisps and rivers of mist, moving faster than the wind between the mountains.
Kristen moved closer to him and rubbed his back. He felt it in a vague and indirect way; it still felt good.
“Yeah,” she said, “they tried once, but they … didn’t like how it was going.”
“Am I gonna die, then?”
“Probably eventually,” Colin said. Kris rolled her eyes.
A strange wind seemed to blow through the virtuality, through him. He felt himself thinning out somehow, and his viewpoint rising into the air.
“Whoa,” he said, and his voice came to him strange and thready.
Colin and Kris stood up, in the virtuality, and looked up toward his viewpoint.
“What’s happening?” he said, his voice still fluttering.
“I’m … not sure,” Kris said.
“Probably just the fMRI connection again?” Colin said, uncharacteristically uncertain.
“Booooo!” Steve said, his viewpoint now moving up and down and bobbing side to side. As far as he could see his own body, it was stretched out and transparent, “I’m a ghooooost!”
Kris put her hand to her forehead and looked down.
“Stop that,” she said, “at least if you can.”
Steve tried to concentrate, to focus on the patterns and concentrations of being in the virtuality, and his viewpoint moved downward slowly.
“Here you come,” Colin smiled.
Steve watched himself re-form with curiosity. “Was that supposed to happen?” he asked.
“Not… especially.”
“Are they working on me again, trying to get the thing out?”
“No, they were just doing some more scans and tests.”
“Including how I interact with you guys?”
“Like last time,” Colin nodded.
“Then why –“
Then there was another, much stronger, gust of that wind, and Steve felt himself torn away, stretched out into mist, and blown somewhere far away.
There was an instant, or a day, of darkness.
“Hello?”
“Steve?” It was Kristen’s voice, somewhere in this dark place.
“Kris? Are we, I mean, is this the real world again?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s real, after all?”
“Colin, you nerd, where are you?”
“Apparently in absolute darkness, where all I can do is speak, and hear you two.”
“Is this part of your virtuality, Kris?”
“No, I mean, it’s not supposed to be. Not Hints of Home or the fork that I made for you, or any other one I’ve made.”
“It’s really simple, anyway.”
“Could be a bug.”
Steve tried to move, tried to see. It was like trying to move your arm, rather than actually moving it. It was like trying to open your eyes in one of those dreams where you can’t open your eyes.
“You two can just duck back out for a second and see what’s going on, right?”
“That, well, that seems like it’s a problem, too,” Colin said, “at least I can’t duck out; you, Kris?”
“Nope, me, either; it’s heh weird. What a trope.”
“This is always happening to main characters,” Colin said, “so I guess we’re main characters.”
“You could be figments of my imagination now,” Steve said, “like, that wind could have been the virtuality’s interpretation of some brain thing happening, and now I’m totally comatose and hallucinating, and you two are still back there, and I’m just hallucinating that your voices are here.”
“Babe–” Kris started.
“It’s true,” Colin said, “if we were imaginary, it would probably be easier to imagine just our voices, and not have to bother with faces and movement and so on.”
“Oh, that’s helpful!”
“You guys trying to convince me you’re real, through pointless bickering?”
“No, but would it work?”
“It might. I’m hating this darkness, could everyone try to summon up some light?”
There was a short silence, then Steve felt a sort of vibration through everything, and a dim directionless light slowly filled the nearby space.
“That worked.”
“As far as it goes.”
“We still look like us.”
“This isn’t what I was wearing, though.”
“Colin’s the same.”
“Well, what else does he ever wear?”
“Hey!”
Colin did indeed look as he had earlier in the virtuality, as perfectly and nattily suited as ever. Kristen, on the other hand, was wearing a loose flowered dress, and Steve was in a well-tailored suit himself, less formal (and, he imagined, more comfortable) than Colin’s, but still he thought rather elegant.
“This is very gender normative,” Kristen said, standing up and slowly turning around, “but I like it.”
“Where are we?” Steve said, “and why can’t you guys duck out? I know I can’t because I’m the patient and my body’s sedated, but…”
“Wow, I hope we’re okay,” Kristen said.
“If something had happened to our bodies, we should have gotten a warning, and probably pulled out automatically,” Colin said logically.
“I don’t know,” said Steve, “the hallucination theory still seem pretty good.”
“That way lies solipsism,” pointed out Kris. She spun over to Steve and touched his shoulder.
“I felt that,” he said.
She frowned. “Me, too. Really well.”
“See? Hallucinations.”
“I’m know if I was a hallucination,” Kris said.
Colin was walking around at the edge of the lighted circle.
“I wonder if this is all there is,” he said.
“It’s a small hallucination, sorry,” said Steve.
“This could be the whole universe,” he said, “although I seem to remember lots more stuff.”
“Colin–“
“This present moment is all that exists,” Colin said, “and all the other stuff is just a memory, that also exists right now.”
“Here he goes.”
“It might pass the time.”
“Shouldn’t be try to be, like, getting back to the real world, making sure our bodies are all okay…”
“If you can think of a way to do that…”
“Good point.”
Colin walked back into the center of the lighted circle, and the three sat down on the plain flat ground again, close to each other, surrounded by darkness all around.
ceoln 