1

Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1

Preface………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………2

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..5

Part I………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….7

Part II……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 10

Part III………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………19

Part IV………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………26

Part V……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….30
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"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the

one ends, and where the other begins?"

-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Premature Burial” (1844)

 3

Preface

The validity of the science-fiction genre in the literary world has long been a topic of

debate. There is a general consensus that the genre is not “real” literature, but rather

paraliterature, a concept that Samuel Delany describes as a “material practice of social

division.” He names other works that have been deemed “just not literature,” i.e. comic books,

westerns, mysteries, and film scripts. In his essay “Paradoxa: Inside and Outside the Canon,”

Delany details his experiences growing up reading science fiction, and touches on both writing

and teaching the genre in his adult life. People often think of sci-fi as beneath them, as if to

admit to reading it (and, god forbid, enjoying it) they would be demoted in the eyes of their

peers. Science fiction books are placed in the backs of bookstores, with the thought that if

people were really intent on reading the genre, they should be able to find it. Authors (unless

they are very well-known) are encouraged by their editors to have neutral book covers, as if the

only way they can sell more copies is by tricking the reader into thinking what they are picking

up is not sci-fi.

As you can imagine, I was a bit apprehensive at first to take on this project. When I

mentioned to people that I was writing a science fiction story, sometimes I was met with the

same attitude as above, but I was pleased to see that most were actually quite enthusiastic.

Their enthusiasm (coming in particular from my wonderful seminar classmates) gave me the

motivation to see this story through. I wanted to write this short story as an homage to those

sci-fi creators who have inspired feelings of greatness and immortality, of life and death, of loss

and everything in between that transcends the words on the page.

 4

Ever since reading The Martian Chronicles in seventh grade, I have felt a draw to science

fiction, and to the limitless potential that can be tapped within such stories. Over the years, I’ve

been inspired by authors such as Jonathan Lethem, Isaac Asimov, John Varley, Ray Bradbury,

and Roger Zelazny, as well as countless others whose works sought to capture the human

experience in ways I had never thought possible. And my fascination isn’t just limited to

literature. I remember watching ET as a child, not really understanding what was going on, but

being enthralled none-the-less by the alien’s glowing fingers. I remember watching 2001: A

Space Odyssey in a film class sophomore year, all 300 of us in the theater holding our breaths as

HAL refused to open the latch. I especially remember watching Alien at my friend’s house in

high school, feeling very confused as to why I liked watching Sigourney Weaver run around the

spaceship in her underwear. Blade Runner and Ex-Machina, Black Mirror and Interstellar and

even animated WALL-E; all of these films and/or series stretched my imagination and inspired

me to reach new heights with each story I wrote.

All of these stories, literature and film included, confront and discuss real-world issues in

an imaginary context, from life to death, and even reality itself. There is a constant overlapping

of feeling both humbled and inspired by those who have dreamt up these universes. Science

fiction isn’t always about scary aliens coming to take over Earth with their brain-washing

machines and tentacled bodies. It can be, definitely, but it also can be about so much more. I

really do hope that the literary world starts to recognize the limitlessness of the sci-fi genre,

and what it can do for readers. Obviously sci-fi, like poetry or romance novels, isn’t for

everyone. But why dismiss the power it can hold before even giving it a chance?
 5

Acknowledgments

This story would not be what it is today without the help of some very generous people.

I’d like to thank Professor Joseph Thomas, whose passion for the science fiction genre inspired

and helped shape my story. I’d also like to thank Professor Meghan Marshall, who took time

out of her very busy schedule to critique and offer helpful suggestions to my fiction writing.

Finally, I’d like to thank Dr. Clare Colquitt and my fellow seminar classmates for their constant

advice and encouragement over the semester. Without them, this story probably would have

wasted away in the depths of my hard drive. All of these people drove me to be better, and I

can never thank them enough.

 6

Going Nowhere Fast

Sydne Aguilar
 7

Sydne Aguilar
Honors Thesis
5/8/18
Going Nowhere Fast

Part 1

The sun shone brightly through Tyson’s curtains on the morning of his 150 th birthday. His prone
form lay on the couch, face smashed into the cushions from where he had fallen asleep the
night before.

His watch chirps. “Good morning, Tyson. It is currently 10:30 AM on Wednesday, November 5th,
2101.”

Tyson scrabbled blindly at the watch to quiet it, groaning. He rolled onto his back, neck prickling
with sweat from having lain directly in the sun’s path. It never used to be this hot, he thought,
feeling every bit the grumpy old man he was.

He got up slowly, rubbing at his eyes before ambling over to the kitchen, staring at the
projection on the fridge door. On autopilot, he tapped the little breakfast icon, selecting the
eggs, bacon, and toast options. As an afterthought, he hit the dessert icon, adding a milkshake
to his order.

“Coming right up, Tyson,” beeped the fridge.

After eating the ready meal, Tyson sipped his milkshake and wandered into the bathroom,
where his reflection stared back at him. His dark, full head of hair was sticking up horribly, and
he grimaced, pushing it back and forth across his forehead. He ran his fingers over his blemish
and wrinkle-free skin, touching lightly at where his crow’s feet used to be. Surprisingly, he
found he still missed those the most.

Why he still looked into the mirror and expected anything to have changed, he never knew.

A sudden pounding on the front door startled him. He straightened up, attempting to flatten his
curls and pull on actual pants at the same time. As a result, he was panting when he opened the
door a few moments later to Kelly’s amused face.

“What a welcome,” said Kelly. He was carrying a bag over his shoulder. It looked heavy.

“Fuck you,” Tyson said automatically, reaching for the bag.

Kelly laughed, ruffling Tyson’s hair as he shouldered his way past him into the apartment. Today
was a good Kelly day, then. Those were a rarity lately.
 8

Tyson trailed Kelly into the kitchen, where he was rummaging around the cupboards. What he
was looking for, Tyson didn’t know. Tyson hadn’t made food for himself in over fifty years, ever
since the refrigerators were made sentient. One of the few technological advances he had
actually seen the use for.

“Are you making me something to eat?” asked Tyson after a few minutes, wary.

Kelly flapped his arm at him, in the middle of trying to turn the stove on. “Yeah, and it’s a
surprise. Go fuck off to the living room or something while I work.”

Tyson didn’t want to watch his kitchen go up in flames, so he settled himself far away on the
couch, trying not to sulk at the mess that Kelly was no doubt creating.

Tyson slumped down sideways onto the fancy fabric, feeling morose. His watch, sensing his
mood, chirped sadly at him.

Kelly’s heavy weight dropped onto the other end of the couch just a few minutes later, startling
Tyson out of his thoughts. He passed a plate over to Tyson, grinning.

Tyson stared down at the plate. It was a pancake, lopsided and kind of pathetic-looking. There
was a single candle stuck in the middle of it. That solved the mystery as to what was in the bag
Kelly brought over.

“Happy birthday, old man.” Kelly looked way too pleased with himself, in a way Tyson hadn’t
seen in a while. Fuck. He’d kind of hoped Kelly had forgotten.

“You know how much I’ve been dreading today,” groaned Tyson. He poked at the pancake
suspiciously.

“What else is new?” said Kelly, leaning over to light the candle with an ancient-looking lighter.
Tyson had a flashback to the unfortunate lighter incident of 2043. His leg hair had grown back,
of course, but Kelly’s poor couch had never been the same.

Kelly sat up and back, shoving at Tyson. “Cheer up, man. I even got you a present!”

“It’d better not be dentures again.” Between the pancake and the false teeth “gift” from five
years ago, Tyson was not optimistic.

Kelly waggled his eyebrows and rolled himself off the couch, knee-walking over to his backpack
and rummaging around. He eventually pulled out a shiny metal object, and lobbed it into
Tyson’s lap. It was surprisingly light.

Tyson raised his eyebrows. “A key?”

 9

Kelly smiled triumphantly. “A key to the clinic.”

“What clinic?” The—oh. The clinic. Tyson hadn’t thought about that place in forever, before
today. What was the point? His hands suddenly felt shaky.

“So I was thinking about what to get you on your birthday, and I have a buddy—”

“You have another friend?” interrupted Tyson, just to be annoying, and also to cover up the
nervousness that was creeping in rapidly.

Kelly ignored him. “Yes, and he owed me a favor. He picks locks and stuff, which you know no
one knows how to do anymore, so—”

“So he’s a criminal. Where did you meet him, again?”

“—and so, after literal months of searching online, I found the address, and he said he could
make a copy of the key they used for the lock. We can get in now, Tyson! We can look around
and see what they had lying around. We could get answers!”

Kelly’s face was lit up. He leaned back, looking at Tyson hopefully. “We could finally die.”

Tyson hadn’t felt hope for the future in a long time. Not since the first few years after meeting
Kelly, in fact. As time had gone on and the serum hadn’t worn off, he’d felt more and more
bitter, angry at his teenage stupidity for bringing this life on himself. Kelly hadn’t even had a
choice.

Tyson had long resigned himself to his immortality sentence. But now, on his 150 th birthday,
looking at Kelly’s face that was usually drawn and sad, he felt he owed it Kelly to try. He leaned
over and blew out his single candle.

“Let’s go see if we can kill ourselves, I guess.”

Kelly fist pumped. “We’re not going anywhere until you eat that pancake I slaved away on,
though.”

Tyson sighed. With any luck, it’d be the last one Kelly ever made him.
 10

Part 2

Tyson had first met Kelly Anderson in 2031. The latter had been holding court at the back of
Tyson’s classroom, the kids around him laughing and ignoring Tyson’s efforts to get their
attention. The temperature had been steadily climbing all day, and he was not in the mood for
problematic students to handle on top of that.

He dutifully began passing out copies of the syllabus to his sleepy-looking students. It was the
start of the semester at Tyson’s college, where he taught French and German for people who
only needed to pass their major requirement. He knew they didn’t want to be there, but he still
took pride in what he did, even if he was known as the weird, old-fashioned guy who still liked
to use paper and ink.

When he made his way back to where the loud kid and his friends were, they took the papers
from him without pausing in their conversation. Tyson huffed a bit and turned away, when the
kid (who Tyson could now see was quite young-looking, sporting blond hair and a vintage-
looking windbreaker) caught his eyes on Tyson’s forearm and froze, mouth open.

Not really knowing what his problem was, Tyson quickly moved to the next aisle. But for the
rest of class, the kid’s gaze hadn’t strayed from him. If Tyson had to bet money, he’d say the kid
looked almost. . . scared. It distracted him so much that he dismissed class early, turning his
back on the room so he could power down the computer and go home.

Unfortunately, within moments of thinking everyone was gone, Tyson heard footsteps
approaching his desk. Plastering a smile on his face, he turned around, and barely had time to
recognize the kid’s ugly jacket as he swung his arm towards Tyson’s face. And then Tyson was
being stabbed in the neck with a pencil.

“What the fuck.” Tyson stumbled back, hand yanking out the pencil and then pressing hard
against the injury out of instinct. Blood poured from between his fingers onto his button-up,
but already Tyson could tell it was slowing down.

The kid hadn’t moved from where he stood in front of Tyson’s desk, gaze darting between
Tyson’s face and the rapidly-closing wound on his skin. His eyes were wide.

“I saw your arm,” the kid finally said, defensively.

Right. Tyson’s left arm, which had ugly black lines leeching out and around the old injection site.
On the rare occasion he rolled his sleeves up (like today), he told those who asked that it was a
tattoo removal gone wrong.

“A natural progression to stabbing, obviously,” Tyson said, a bit faint. He had always hated
blood.
 11

“I had to be sure,” the kid snapped. He glanced around the empty classroom, then pulled the
sleeve of his jacket up slowly, revealing his pale forearm. It had an almost identical pattern to
Tyson’s.

“I had to be sure,” the kid said again, but now he looked a bit guilty. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine,” said Tyson automatically. That was about as old as he could get away with. His
mind was reeling. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing on the kid’s arm. All this time, and
he’d never once seen someone else like him.

He knew there had to be others, of course, poor and desperate and unlucky like he had been.
But he never tried to seek them out. He’d wanted to wallow in his own self-pity and sadness for
a bit after the initial realization, but as time passed he realized he wasn’t getting over it. He
didn’t need others to remind him of their sad situation.

Or so he had thought.

The kid glared. “Come on, man. How old are you actually?”

Tyson fully met his gaze, lifting his chin. “Eighty.”

The kid whistled. “Old man.”

“What about you, then?” Tyson bristled.

The kid grimaced, shuffling his feet and rubbing the back of his head. “Sixty-two.”

“Guess that explains the weird clothing.”

The kid looked like he wanted to tell him to fuck off, but also kind of thoughtful, like he’d just
had his worldview flipped upside down and didn’t really know how to proceed.

Tyson could relate.

“I’m Tyson. Turned in 1978.” He’d never said that out loud to anyone before. He held his
breath.

“Kelly. 1991.”

Tyson was big enough to admit to himself that the cocktail of emotions he’d experienced in the
last five minutes was fading away into something cautiously resembling hope, an emotion that
he hadn’t seen reason to feel in decades.

But—
 12

Kelly was edging away, zipping up that horrible windbreaker he probably hadn’t gotten in a
vintage store, as Tyson had previously thought.

“I promised I’d go meet my girlfriend, but, uh, I really am sorry about—” Kelly waved his hand
at Tyson’s stained shirt, “—all that.”

As much as he was trying to be rational, Tyson felt panicked. He wanted to sit Kelly down and
prod him for information about what had happened to him, what he had done for the past forty
years, if anyone he knew from before was alive, if—

Kelly interrupted his thoughts. “So, I’ll see you next seminar, alright?”

Tyson exhaled. Kelly was still going to be his student, for whatever reason. Boredom? Most
likely. That’s how Tyson had ended up there, after all.

He’d have time. All they had was time.

To cover his panic, Tyson straightened and called out as Kelly walked away. “Girlfriend, huh?
She a student?”

Kelly answered back, a bit warily. “Yeah, a third-year. Why?”

“Perv,” Tyson said, making sure to leer obnoxiously so Kelly would know he was joking.

Sure enough, Kelly laughed, shoulders relaxing. Tyson was too far away to see if his face
crinkled when he smiled, or if it remained smooth and even like Tyson’s.

“You know it, old man.”

And with that, he was out the door, jacket flying behind him in the hot summer breeze.

Tyson collapsed onto his desk seat, rubbing at his temples. He plucked at his ruined, blood-
covered shirt, and sighed, hoping he could sneak to the bathroom and wash off the worst of it
before going home.

He fidgeted, looking at the papers strewn across his desk. He had so much to do, especially
after having cut the class short today. Tyson pulled over his planner and tried to arrange next
week’s lesson plan, but he couldn’t concentrate. He felt almost giddy, thoughts racing around
his mind like the new monorail system that crossed through the city’s skyline. Both it and Kelly’s
arrival promised a new future, shiny and filled with potential as far as the eye could see.

Tyson pushed away his papers and shook his head. He needed to get ahold of himself. Kelly
could turn out to be the worst person Tyson had ever met. He had just stabbed Tyson in the
 13

neck not an hour beforehand. Logically, Tyson should already be running in the opposite
direction.

But he knew himself. He had felt so isolated these past few decades, with the only interactions
he had being with students and his coworkers. He dreaded summer breaks when he didn’t even
have those meager interactions to fall back on. And now here Kelly was, basically serving up a
friendship on a silver platter. Tyson would be fool to let it slip through his fingers.

With that thought, he stood up to leave, picking up Kelly’s pencil from the floor and lobbing it
directly into the trash can.

Not bad for an old man.

***

Over the course of that semester, Tyson and Kelly slowly became close friends.

Tyson tried to tamp down on his enthusiasm at first, although he was sure he did a terrible job
on succeeding. He could tell Kelly was eager too, even if he tried not to show it too much. After
every class period, they would sit around Tyson’s desk and talk about anything and everything,
reminiscing about how they’ve gotten on in the years past. Things like:

“How do you make money?” asked Tyson one day.

“Investments. All pay and no real work, you know?”

“Makes sense.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

and

“Do you pick up at clubs?”

“Jesus, no. I feel too much like a cradle robber.”

Kelly nodded knowingly. “Ah. So, you like them geriatric.”

Tyson sputtered. Kelly held up his hands. “It was a legitimate question!”
 14

and

“How did you figure it out?”

Kelly had been twenty-two, drunk and driving home from a friend’s house before plowing into a
tree. He remembered his legs being crushed between the dashboard and the seat. His head was
ringing and there was blood everywhere, dripping from his head into his eyes. He’d closed his
eyes and waited to die.

Instead, he woke up in the hospital three weeks later, completely fine. When he questioned
how he was alive, or at least uninjured, the doctors reassured him that his injuries were less
serious than they had thought. He was told that any traumatic memories were a side effect of
the stress he had been through.

He was released later that day, the only souvenirs of his ordeal a curious plethora of black
marks crisscrossing the ditch of his arm, and a bottle of pills for the stress.

The pills had been swallowed dutifully, but the marks had never gone away.

The semester was almost halfway over by the time Kelly had confessed this, and hearing him
tell it had been. . . horrible. He’d stared at a point over Tyson’s shoulder the entire time,
twisting his fingers around the stupid windbreaker that Tyson had yet to see him without. I
know I shouldn’t have driven home that night, he said. But I did, and this is how the universe
decided to punish me.

Tyson tried to tell him, more than once, that it wasn’t his fault. He was young and had been
dumb, sure, but no one deserved the hell on earth the scientists at the hospital had brought
upon him. Kelly had nodded, but Tyson could tell he would probably never could be convinced
otherwise.

Tyson, though. Tyson had gotten himself into their situation willingly.

He had been twenty-four and a student, poor and with no idea what he was going to do with
his degree, but always up for a good time.

One day, he’d been stumbling home from some bar with his friends, singing loudly and weaving
between the crowds on the sidewalk, his arm around some giggling girl. Tyson had been
drunkenly twirling her around when a sign on the building they were passing caught his eye.

Tired of looking tired all the time? Be the first to try our cutting-edge, miracle anti-aging
regimen. You will be compensated well. Inquire within.

Although momentarily intrigued, he had forgotten about it almost as soon as he read it. But a
few weeks later, when rent was due and he was reduced to eating soup crackers yet again, he
 15

remembered the sign in a fit of starvation-induced brilliance. Not to mention, he was getting
tired of the wrinkles that had started to set in around his mouth.

So Tyson had been vain as well as poor. He certainly wasn’t proud of it now, and felt himself
wincing as he relayed the story to Kelly.

When he had walked into the building the next day, a long hallway opened into what looked
like a doctor’s waiting room. He had given his name to the smiling receptionist, who promptly
ushered him back into a fancy-looking lab and explained the trial program.

Tyson would be taking part in a clinical trial that the medical company was hoping to patent,
designed to slow down the signs of aging in people. They had developed a serum that could be
injected at specific points on the face and body, and additional pills would then be taken
activate the serum within the body. The payoff was $1000.

Tyson was the perfect age for the trial, he was told. He would receive the injections now and
come back at the end of three weeks, with strict instructions to take the pills every day. He was
given half of the money promised, and told the rest would come once the scientists recorded
his progress.

He hadn’t really kept track of what the scientists would actually be injecting. There had been a
lot of medical talk, most of it too difficult for him to follow. He thought it was probably similar
to Botox. The receptionist had kept gesturing to the laugh lines on the sides of Tyson’s eyes as
an example of what the serum would “cure.” Tyson had scowled, slightly offended on principle,
and scribbled his signature on the release forms.

It had gone quickly, after that. He was given 6 injections: two in the face, two in the arms, and
two in the legs. But Tyson hated needles and blood, and the sight of them advancing towards
his arm with a huge syringe had caused him pass right out in the exam chair.

He woke up alone in the room with a cold compress on his forehead, the scientists nowhere to
be seen. So he’d gotten up, taken the plastic bag with the pills that was resting on the counter,
and walked out the door. According to the clock on the way, the whole thing had taken less
than twenty minutes.

Life went on normally after that: school, work, going out with friends. Tyson popped the pills
diligently every night before bed. He didn’t see any difference until he looked in the mirror two
weeks later and noticed his face was completely wrinkle-free. His acne scars were gone, his
crow’s feet smoothed out, the scar below his chin faded.

He looked like a baby, was his first thought. A living, six-foot replica of a Ken doll.
 16

Tyson had reached out to touch the mirror then, but snatched his hands back at the last
second, feeling vaguely unsettled. It was almost like he was looking at a stranger, and he didn’t
like it at all.

He decided to stop taking the pills after that. He would go back to the clinic and explain that
their product had worked and thank them, but didn’t want anything more done to his
appearance. The three weeks was almost up, anyway. He would take his cash and go.

And then he’d gone back, and the clinic was gone. Well, it was still there, but the door was
chain-bolted, and no signs of life existed inside when Tyson tried to peer through the windows.
If he hadn’t been inside just a couple weeks earlier, he would have thought it just another
abandoned old building. Tyson was pissed he’d been cheated out of $500, but there was
nothing he could do.

Three years went by, and Tyson’s new looks hadn’t budged a bit. He got teased at every new
job for looking like a fresh-faced teenager, got carded at bars, and hit on by every person from
the ages of eighteen and up. But if he was being honest with himself, he kind of liked the
attention. He’d never considered himself ugly, before, but people smiled at him a lot more
now, wanted things from him. It wasn’t exactly a hardship to be pretty, and he began to allow
himself to revel in it.

He met Mandy at a club when he was twenty-seven. He had been shooting darts with some
friends after work, when a tall, dark-haired girl had stepped up and announced she wanted to
play the next round. If she won, Tyson would have to buy her a beer. She ended up losing
horribly, but Tyson bought her a beer anyway.

They were married within the year, moving into a small house in the suburbs. He had a modest
but well-paid job as an accountant in the city. Mandy worked at a bookstore, where she would
showcase her poetry at their open-mic events. They even had a dog, a prissy white poodle
named Candy.

When the weather was warm enough, Tyson liked to wash his Vista Cruiser in the driveway,
shorts and no shirt on, and dance to the newest Earth, Wind, and Fire playing from the radio in
the kitchen. Mandy would sit on the porch steps to keep him company, smoking a cigarette and
singing along horribly to make him laugh.

Mandy got sick not even two years into their marriage. She withered away to skin and bones
before Tyson’s eyes, first in their bed and then in the hospital, coughing and coughing and
coughing. The doctors said it was lung cancer. Stage 4, inoperable.

She was dead and buried three months later.

Tyson felt like his sanity had disappeared along with her. How was it possible to be not quite
thirty years old, and a widower? He fell into a state of depression. Instead of turning to the
 17

bottle, he would smoke cigarette after cigarette of Mandy’s favorite brand late at night,
eventually stumbling into work with eyes bloodshot from crying and lack of sleep. He was
expecting it when his job eventually let him go.

Without money, Tyson had had to sell the Vista Cruiser. He gave their dog back to the shelter.
He could barely afford food, much less Mandy’s cigarettes. It wouldn’t be long before their
house was seized by the bank.

In a final fit of despair, Tyson had decided he’d had enough. He went to their room, took the
handgun from the dresser, sat in the bathtub, and cried as he pulled the trigger. He woke up
with blood everywhere, still alive, and no sign of a wound.

Confused, he’d tried again. And again, until he finally put the pieces together of the extent to
which the serum had changed his body. Tyson packed a suitcase the next day and went to the
airport, not caring where he was going. All he knew was that here was nothing in the city for
him anymore. He didn’t want to be reminded of all he had lost.

When Tyson asked Kelly how he had figured everything out, Kelly had shrugged and mumbled
something about downing a bunch of aspirin one night, drinking a bottle of vodka another time,
jumping off a cliff the next. Each time, he had woken up. And even after realizing what must
have happened, he said it had been nothing more than a detached curiosity at first, testing how
far he could push himself.

But of course, the novelty wore off after a while. Kelly had left town soon after, not bothering
to say goodbye to anyone either.

At one point during their meetings, Kelly pulled out a bent and faded Polaroid. Tyson stared at a
Kelly with a broken nose, permanent windburn on his cheeks, and a faded tattoo on his
collarbone. That was all gone now.

“Be honest. Do you think the serum will wear off eventually?” Kelly had asked, tucking the
photograph away carefully.

“I dunno. I kind of have to hope so, I think.”

“Yeah.”

“But it has been a long time.”

“A really long time, yeah.”

After the semester was over, Tyson and Kelly continued to keep in touch. The years went by
slowly, at first. Tyson moved cities every so often, and Kelly followed him by silent agreement.
They both wanted to avoid any questions or speculation about their permanently youthful look.
 18

The few acquaintances they made in these cities grew older. Neighbors moved in and moved
out. Buildings were built and torn down. Technology changed. The sun grew hotter.

Tyson started trying to keep up with the changing world. He invested in the latest technology,
kept himself on top of the news and trends. He threw himself more thoroughly into school,
getting degrees in anything that had ever remotely interested him, bouncing around as a
lecturer at various colleges. That was how he had learned to cope: trying to fit into a world he
shouldn’t have been alive to see.

Kelly was the opposite. He kept his apartments more or less outfitted the same as they had
been decorated before. He listened to old music, watched old films, and dressed like it was still
the early nineties. He eventually stopped going to classes at Tyson’s schools, choosing instead
to wander around the city and people-watch.

Nowadays Kelly usually carried an air of exhaustion around him, alternating between apathy or
anger if anyone but Tyson tried to make conversation. Worse still was when he’d be talking to
Tyson like the old days, and then suddenly trail off and let his head loll forward, as if
remembering the weight of the years all at once. The bad days were getting more and more
frequent, and sometimes there was nothing Tyler could do to make it better.

“Kelly, man. When was the last time you ate?”

“April, maybe. I dunno.”

“Kelly. We’re two weeks into May.”

Kelly would curl tighter into himself on Tyson’s couch. “Guess I beat my record, then.”

But that Kelly was nowhere to be seen when he had strolled into Tyson’s apartment and
presented Tyson with the clinic key. And that was mostly why Tyson had agreed, if only to keep
Kelly happy for a bit longer.

Tyson didn’t think of himself often as being lucky. But the universe had found him Kelly, and he
wasn’t ever really alone anymore, and for that he was pathetically grateful. Kelly wouldn’t leave
him at this point. He couldn’t.

Misery loves company, after all.

 19

Part 3

The weather was blazing and still when Tyson and Kelly stepped off the bullet train in Tyson’s
old city. Kelly had spent half the ride over looking out the window in silence while he chewed
his lip to pieces, and the other half fidgeting, until Tyson got so fed up he moved to the other
side of the car.

It had been just over a week since Tyson’s birthday, when Kelly had presented him with the key
that might hold the literal answer to their futures. Kelly had spent the time being the most
excited Tyson had seen him literally in decades, swanning around Tyson’s apartment with a
permanent smile on his face, eating Tyson’s food, and leaving his ancient belongings scattered
everywhere.

“Imagine never having to do the dishes again, Tyson,” Kelly had said, staring up at the ceiling
with a dreamy expression on his face.

“You do realize the dishwasher was invented in like, 1950, right? So even your vintage ass
shouldn’t be washing dishes in the first place.”

“The dishwasher was invented in 1886,” beeped Tyson’s watch helpfully.

But the more relaxed and happy Kelly looked as the days went by, Tyson was having more and
more trouble wrapping around his head around the whole thing. He had lived over a hundred
years knowing that there would likely be a thousand more to come. He and Kelly had spent
endless amounts of energy daydreaming about how they would kill themselves if they could.
There was no real purpose behind it. They were both painfully aware that it was all just wishful
thinking.

Or so Tyson had thought. Now those daydreams were quite possibly about to come to life,
thanks to Kelly’s manic burst of enthusiasm towards the clinic that he had managed to hide
from Tyson for months.

And the worst part was, he wasn’t even sure why he was dragging his feet in the first place. He
was definitely wary of being too optimistic, of truly believing that after all these years they
could finally have an end in sight. That was understandable, even expected, he was sure.

Was he just scared of going back to the clinic? His sense of foreboding towards their trip had
grown over the week, until he couldn’t help but feel that the clinic was something they were
meant to leave alone. It was like one of those ancient tombs in Egypt he had learned about as a
kid, where the men who broke in got cursed by the gods for their trespassing.

Tyson’s nervousness had also caused him to start having nightmares, something he hadn’t
experienced since Mandy died. Usually in the dreams he was running down an endless grey
 20

corridor, aware that someone was watching him as a darkness moved in steadily, threatening
to envelop him.

But what was the worst that could happen? Physical trauma? Any injuries would heal within
minutes. Mental trauma? Any more than they had already sustained was laughable. Best case
scenario, they ended up dead. And that was what Tyson had wanted ever since the beginning.

Wasn’t it?

He tried to reassure himself that he was just scared of change, but a small, nasty voice in his
head was telling him something else. And wasn’t that a laughable thought: that after all this
time spent hoping for death, when push came to shove, he might find himself wishing
otherwise.

Shaking his head at himself, Tyson and Kelly wandered from the train station down to the main
road, using Tyson’s watch for directions. This was the first time Tyson had been back here after
Mandy died, and he barely recognized anything about his old home. Any buildings or landmarks
he remembered were long gone, replaced by shiny new renovations and a lot of concrete.

The roads were still there, but no cars drove on them any longer. Instead, chrome hovercars
zipped up and down clear tubes that ran along the streets, occasionally coming to an abrupt
stop in front of a house. There was no grass on the front yards of the identical homes, all
designed with special materials to keep out the heat of the sun.

Tyson hadn’t seen any people after stepping off the train, but that was expected. People didn’t
generally walk outside anymore if they could help it, relying on their hovercars to get them to
and fro. The only reason Tyson and Kelly’s skin wasn’t burning was that their bodies healed the
blisters too quickly to be a problem.

The air was silent and stifling around them as they walked.

Kelly didn’t seem to even notice Tyson’s preoccupation, which miffed Tyson more than he
thought it would. Shouldn’t he be at least a bit apprehensive over the fact that they were about
to cease existing?

Instead, Kelly was still beaming like a little kid as his hand played with the key, looped on a
string around his neck for safekeeping. Usually he was sullen and withdrawn in public places,
unhappy about having to interact with people other than Tyson any more than he had to. He
tended to glare at anyone visibly older than him, which early on Tyson had given up on trying to
discourage.

He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he hadn’t realized that they had come to a stop until
he literally ran into Kelly’s back, rebounding off him and almost sprawling onto the sidewalk.
 21

“Hey!” Tyson yelped, adjusting his shirt and fixing his hair. “Warn a guy.”

Kelly had stopped in front of a dilapidated building, looking very out of place and dirty in the
midst of the new city buildings. There was the heavy door with the chain on it that had haunted
Tyson for decades after he had first seen it. Tyson’s throat went dry the longer he stared at it.

“Is this it?” Kelly asked, hushed.

“You have reached your destination, Tyson,” his watch chirped at them.

Kelly looked at Tyson, and finally sobered up at the conflicted expression that Tyson was sure
was on his face. He reached over and put his arm around Tyson’s shoulder, shaking him so that
Tyson’s teeth rattled in his skull.

“Ready for the beginning of the end, old man?”

Tyson honestly didn’t know if he was. “Yeah.”

Kelly pulled out the key from his shirt and gripped it in his hand, stepping up to the door and
fitting it into the lock. There was a click, and the rusty chain fell away at their feet in a puff of
dust.

The metal door stood there, bared and ugly. Kelly stepped up and lay his hand on the handle,
and Tyson was seized by a desire to yell at him to let it go, for them to turn around and run
back to the train. Instead, he wiped his sweating forehead with his shaky hands and nodded.

Kelly paused to give him a thumbs up, then turned the handle slowly. They both stared into the
darkness the door revealed as it slowly yawned open. It felt very anticlimactic, Tyson thought.
For a second, the panic was gone and he felt a vicious sense of achievement. He had made it
back. He had come full circle. He was going to win.

“I’m going first,” Kelly announced. “Wouldn’t want you to get your paws dirty.”

“Why should you go first? I’ve been here before.”

“Yeah, and you were dumb enough to come here willingly. I go first.”

With that, he disappeared through the threshold, Tyson hot on his heels so he wouldn’t lose
him in the dark.

The old linoleum squeaked under his shoes as he hurried along the hallway, passing ominous
shapes Tyson was pretty sure were boxes and chairs, but made him uneasy nonetheless. He
came out in the reception area, unchanged except for the presence of Kelly, who was poking
around the large desk with interest.
 22

“Find anything?” Tyson called out, bumping his hip into the desk and wincing.

“Just office supplies, mostly. A tube of lipstick.” Kelly twisted open the lid and squinted inside.
“An ugly lipstick. Was she wearing this when she convinced you to go through with the
injections? Tell me the truth, Tyson.”

“Shhh. Shut up and be serious.”

“Who’s here to listen to us?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just find the stuff we need and get out of here as quickly as possible, okay?”

Tyson started trying all the doors around the reception room. One revealed a broom closet,
another a bathroom, and another what looked like a breakroom, stocked with some seriously
old food. Tyson couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a packet of Top Ramen, or a
coffee maker. It reminded him of his college days, and of mornings with Mandy before they
went off to their separate jobs.

He quickly shoved that train of thought down. This was definitely not the time to be getting
nostalgic.

He started poking around the food again, momentarily forgetting what he was actually
supposed to be doing, when all the lights suddenly surged on at once.

Tyson couldn’t help it. He screamed. From the muffled sounds he could hear outside the door,
Kelly was freaking out as well.

Tyson yanked the door open and ran out to look for Kelly, who was now staring at the ceiling
open-mouthed and frozen. The lights were making a loud buzzing noise, eerie and horrible.

They spoke at the same time.

“Did you touch—”

“Did you—”

“Kelly, I swear—”

“You know I fucking didn’t. I don’t know how that happened.”

And just as quickly as they had come on, the lights shut off. The buzzing kept going.
 23

Tyson felt like he couldn’t breathe, weighed down and trapped like a rat in a cage. The buzzing
was growing louder, he was sure of it. He could feel it pounding in his skull. He gritted his teeth
and closed his eyes, rubbing at his temples. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t think—

He gradually became aware that Kelly was shaking him.

“Tyson. Tyson, chill. It’s alright,” Kelly was saying, over and over.

“Shh. Someone knows we’re here. There’s someone in here,” Tyson whispered, frantic. He
could hear his own voice, pitched high and reedy. Scared.

“I think that was like a, like a—warning, or something. I don’t like this.” Why wasn’t Kelly
freaking out too? Couldn’t he sense that something was very wrong here?

“Tyson, calm down. What’s the worst that can happen? Even if there is someone here, what’s
the worst they could do to us? We don’t have to be scared.”

“Then why did you scream?”

“I was startled, alright? That’s it. Why did you scream?”

“Because I was scared. I don’t know if I want to do this anymore,” Tyson whispered to him.
God. He felt so ashamed to be admitting it, but he knew that it was true. The buzzing still hadn’t
stopped.

Kelly pulled back from where they had been leaning in to hear each other better. “What? Do
what anymore?”

“Let’s get out of here, Kelly. We can try again another time,” Tyson pleaded, grabbing onto
Kelly’s arm and trying to tug him down the hallway. His headache was getting worse. Why
wasn’t Kelly understanding him?

Kelly wrenched his arm away, angry and confused.

“I can’t believe you, Tyson,” Kelly hissed. “This is all we’ve wanted, all we’ve hoped for, literally
since we met. Were you lying to me this entire time?”

“No!” Tyson yelled. They both flinched.

“No,” Tyson said again, trying to calm himself down. “But we aren’t supposed to be here. I’ve
been having bad dreams—I think now they might’ve been like, warnings, or something, and—”

“You’re just panicking,” Kelly said, shaking his head. “It’s going to be ok. We’re going to find a
way out of this, I swear.”
 24

Tyson slumped onto the floor, feeling suddenly exhausted. Kelly looked hurt now. Good, Tyson
thought viciously. He was so tired.

“Sorry. I’m just tired, Kelly.”

“Me too. That’s why I wanted to come here so badly.” Kelly’s eyes had turned red around the
edges, like he was about to start crying. He turned his face away when Tyson tried to make eye
contact, bringing his hands up to scrub at his hair.

“Five more minutes of looking for a cure, or something. Please. Then we can go. I promise.”

He looked defeated. Tyson knew Kelly would never recover if they didn’t find something to, if
not cure them, at least give them some concrete hope.

Tyson knew he had to fix this.

As the buzzing pounded away in his skull, Tyson stood up and started jiggling the door handle to
what he remembered as leading to the main part of the clinic. When that didn’t get him
anywhere, he looked around for something to break the small window set in the door. Maybe
he could use it to break open the glass so he could reach through and unlock the door from the
other side?

He eyed the stapler sitting on top of the desk. Good enough.

Shards of glass were getting everywhere, flying and cutting into Tyson’s hand and arm as he
pounded away at the window. There was blood dripping down, even though he could see the
cuts closing almost as soon as they happened. Seeing that revived him, gave him the anger he
needed to get the door open, his last chance to change the course of their lives.

It felt like an hour before Tyson broke through and opened the lock, but in reality was only
about thirty seconds. He swung open the door in grim satisfaction, finally turning towards
where Kelly was standing in the far corner in silence, staring.

“Come on, man. I didn’t get my hands dirty for nothing.”

Kelly started to grin. “Five minutes, I swear.”

“You got it,” Tyson said. Not a minute more. His head was starting to really hurt.

They stepped through the door together. The lights flickered on again, illuminating the place.
Quickly, just as he had the last time he’d been here, Tyson took in the neat cubicles, the metal
dentist-like chairs, and the steel trays, still stacked precisely on the countertops.
 25

There was the sink in the corner into which Tyson had tossed his cold compress. The plastic
bags that peeked out of an opened cupboard. The pill bottles, labeled neatly on their shelf.
Everything still in place like over a hundred years hadn’t passed by.

When he finally dragged his eyes onto Kelly, Tyson saw that he was staring not at the contents
of the clinic, but at the far corner of the room. Tyson followed his gaze, at last spotting the ten
heads that had swiveled around to meet their gazes.
 26

Part 4

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” one of the people asked them, frowning. He turned
to the man next to him. “I thought those chains were meant to last awhile.”

“They are,” said the second man, squinting in their direction. The rest of the group had started
to whisper amongst themselves. Tyson opened his mouth to say something, feeling like he
should say something, anything, but Kelly got there first.

Kelly cleared his throat. “You don’t know who we are?”

The group looked around at each other, before the first man spoke up again. “No, we don’t.
And you need to leave before—”

“This isn’t funny!” Kelly burst out. Tyson could see his hands shaking as he clenched and
unclenched them by his sides. “You ruined our fucking lives.”

He pointed at his chest. “1991” – he frantically gestured at Tyson— “1978. You injected us, you
tricked us, and now we can’t die like we’re supposed to. Tell them, Tyson!”

Tyson’s tongue couldn’t seem to unstick from the roof of his mouth. His mind was still reeling
from the fact that there were people here, he was right—but the first man interrupted right
away. “Wait. What exactly did you say we did to you?”

Kelly was red in the face by now, fists still clenching and breathing hard. “Made. Us. Immortal.”
He looked like a little kid throwing a tantrum, and Tyson had to fight down an absurd desire to
let out nervous laughter.

Kelly walked closer and stopped a few feet from them, muttering to himself as he fought to roll
up his shirt sleeve. As soon as he shoved it up to his elbow, he thrust his blackened forearm
under their noses.

“Tyson!” hissed Kelly impatiently. Tyson slowly rolled his sleeve up, feeling like he was stuck on
autopilot, until his marks were on full display, dark and ugly as ever. He held his arm out in front
of him.

Their showing made the group start to whisper among themselves again, but this time in what
looked like excitement to Tyson, rather than confusion. He strained to listen as they started
typing away frantically on their computers.

“1991, he said? And—”

“1978. Type it in there—”

 27

“Ok, here we go, I’ve got something—”

Tyson could hear the rapid clicking of the mouse button, and then silence. One by one, they all
turned to look at him and Kelly. There was a gleam in their eyes now, one that wiped away all
traces of the tired and pale group that had greeted them five minutes ago.

“Tyson Patek and Kelly Anderson. Immortality serum.”

It wasn’t phrased as a question.

Kelly rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Now fix us.”

“Just a moment, Mr. Anderson.” A new voice had just come from a shadowy corner of the
room, and Tyson watched as a short, middle-aged man came into view, wearing an old-
fashioned suit and thick glasses. The original group seemed to shrink back, fading a bit in his
presence.

“Sit down for a bit, and we can explain ourselves to you,” the man said, smiling. “I imagine you
and Mr. Patek must be wanting answers after all this time.”

“I don’t want answers, I want you to give me a fucking needle so I can off myself!” Kelly yelled,
eyes now wide and overly bright.

“What about your friend Mr. Patek?” asked the man smoothly. “What does he want?”

Kelly whipped his head around back at Tyson. “Tyson. Come on,” he pleaded, sounding lost. He
didn’t finish his sentence, and it hung in the space between him and Tyson.

“Maybe we should hear him out, Kelly. Just for a minute.” He felt like wincing after he said that,
looking at Kelly’s betrayed expression. Tyson had no idea what he was doing.

The man smiled widely with all his teeth. Tyson’s bad feeling returned to his chest.

Kelly crossed his arms over his chest, glaring down at the floor.

“My name is Patrick Burke. My employees and I work at this corporation, tirelessly advocating
and researching for methods of the advancement of the human race.”

He paused, and started to pace around the room a bit. “Some experimental trials were different
than others, as you might imagine. Why would we put all our eggs in one basket? We tried
many different things before the immortality one, of course.”

“What happened to those people? Where are they now?” Kelly cut in.
 28

Burke waved his hand dismissively. “The trials didn’t work on them.” Tyson noticed he didn’t
give an answer about their whereabouts.

“But finally, almost miraculously, it seemed, we managed to invent an immortality serum,

guarding whoever we were to inject it into against aging, and the very ravages of time itself.”

“But who to give the serum to?” Burke wondered aloud. “Someone who was vain enough to
answer our fake ad we displayed, who would sign his life away without reading the fine print,
and who was desperate enough for money that he would do just about anything without asking
questions.”

“Lo and behold, we found our person in two days.”

Hearing it all laid out like that so flippantly, Tyson felt a rise of anger and humiliation break
through his state of shock. He knew all of this, and had beaten himself up with the knowledge
for centuries. This Burke guy didn’t have to rub his face in it.

Tyson covered his arm defensively.

“Oh, right. We put a tracking device in your arm while you were still in the clinic,” Burke
continued. “That’s why your arms look like that.”

Tracking devices? He’d always thought it was something in the serum that caused that.

“You were our success, Mr. Patek,” Burke said. “But then someone broke into the clinic, and
destroyed all of our data, down to the very last vial of serums/test tubes.” His face grew cloudy
with the memory of the incident.

“It took us over a decade to get everything right again. But maybe it was a good thing. The
serum was made even better by the time we injected Mr. Anderson over here.”

“But why me?” Kelly said. His fists were clenched again. “Of all people. Why did you have to
pick me?”

“You made it easy for us,” Burke went on. “No one came to visit you in the hospital those three
weeks you were there. We assumed you had no family or friends that would care enough to ask
questions.”

“And you were in a coma, which made it remarkably simple to just. . . proceed ahead with
things.” Burke smiled in that creepy way again. “That’s how we got your signature on those
papers, after all.”
 29

Tyson saw Kelly’s face crumple, and felt something snap inside of him. As if watching himself
from above, he grabbed the nearest metal tray off the countertop, and swung it full force into
Burke’s smug gaze.

The tray went right through his face.

 30

Part 5

Two things seemed to happen at once. Burke’s entire body froze and began to flicker, the
details of his face and suit blurring in and out of focus as another voice suddenly boomed out,
seeming to emanate from the very walls of the clinic.

“Congratulations, Mr. Patek! You have reached the end of the simulation.”

Tyson dropped the tray in shock. He looked around wildly for the source of the new voice, but
finding none, turned to look back at Kelly for his reaction.

Kelly’s body was frozen in place, and as Tyson watched, his outline started to flicker as well. If
he squinted, he could also see the edges of Kelly start to blur a bit, as if he was looking at his
reflection in a pool of water.

The voice rang out again. “You’re probably wondering as to what is happening around you. It is
time I fill you in.”

“The clinic you went into in 1978 is real. The corporation was real, but you were lied to about
its function. You took part in an experimental psychology trial. You were injected with a
sleeping agent, and when you fell unconscious we transported you into a virtual reality of sorts,
almost like a video game. This way, we were free to track you in as we pleased.”

Tyson had no idea what a video game was. What was the fuck was going on?

“Our goal was to study human behavior at its core, to test the very limits of the human
condition. We wanted to see how a person would react in certain situations. The possibilities
were endless. Our computers allowed us to create whole worlds: people, places, technology,
etc. Everything you ever saw or lived was the result of the imaginations of the scientists behind
his project.”

It stopped to clear its throat. “We wanted to see how far we could force your mind to adapt. I
will admit, it became quite a fun game after a while. The trick was to do everything gradually,
with the years progressing as if you were living real time.”

The voice sighed. “I will admit, Mr. Patek, that you made some things harder on yourself than
you needed. With all due respect, you were quite oblivious to some of the thinking paths we
wanted you to embark on. We were forced to sometimes throw a wrench in your life to. . .
shake things up a bit, shall we say. For instance, we gave you a wife, and then we killed her.”

Tyson’s mind screeched to a stop. He could distantly make out the voice talking to him still, but
for the most part a sudden silence had descended upon his ears. What was he saying? Visions
of Mandy in the hospital bed flooded his mind, growing weaker and weaker as those three
months progressed.
 31

“Mandy died of cancer,” Tyson forced himself to say. He felt numb.

“She did, yes. Quite tragic. Who do you think gave her the cancer in the first place?” asked the
voice, sounding sympathetic.

“But the cigarettes…” Tyson trailed off. People hadn’t known about lung cancer back then. But
Tyson had thrown himself obsessively into research the months in before Mandy had gone.

“Almost too convenient, right?” asked the voice.

Tyson could feel a lump forming in his throat. His thoughts, previously turned sluggish and
frozen, were now zinging around his head.

“After we took Mandy away from you, Mr. Patek, we thought we’d try something else. Give you
someone you thought was in your same predicament for you to have around. A little morale
boost. What good were you to us if you laid around depressed all day?”

“So we orchestrated your meet-up with Kelly. You were meant to find each other in your
classroom that day.”

Tyson looked over at Kelly again. Kelly was looking down straight at him, smiling genially in a
way Tyson had never seen before. His body was still blurring in and out of focus. Tyson felt
sickened by the sight.

“I don’t believe you,” Tyson said firmly to the walls. And he didn’t. How could his entire life, the
past over 150 years, be a lie? “Prove it.”

He wasn’t going to go down without a fight, he thought. He wasn’t a fool.

“Show him, Kelly,” the voice commanded. Tyson watched as Kelly unfroze to bare his arm with
the markings again, the thing that had connected them from the very beginning. Kelly closed his
eyes, and Tyson felt a sick swoop in his stomach as the marks faded away, leaving a smooth,
pale forearm that Tyson had never seen before. No, no, no…

“Tyson?” Kelly was talking again. Kelly reached out to touch his arm, and Tyson flinched back.

Tyson balled his fists, nails digging into his palms. He felt an overwhelming urge to pinch
himself, to ask Kelly to slap him on the face. He couldn’t process what was happening. His only
thought was get away, get away…

“Tyson, I’m sorry.” Kelly did look genuinely sorry, which felt like a punch to the gut. Kelly, the
biggest betrayal of them all. There was no Kelly. Kelly was part of a computer simulation, a
 32

projection, every word and movement programmed by people in the real world that Tyson had
never met.

“Don’t fucking talk to me,” Tyson snarled. He looked wildly around the room. For what, he had
no idea. He felt the phantom faces of the computer scientists looming over him, like he was a
rat in a cage, running on a wheel that led to nowhere. Because that was what he had been
doing this entire time. Playing into their game, chugging along in life for nothing but their
amusement.

“You aren’t real. None of this was real,” Tyson knew distantly he was yelling again, but he
couldn’t make himself stop. “Fuck. Fuck—”

The voice cut through his head, calm. “We understand this has come as a bit of a shock. We
honestly had no idea how long we could keep this up for.”

Tyson saw red. “Who’s controlling Kelly now, making him say this shit? Some fucking intern that
thought it’d be funny to mess with me?”

“It’s all a computer program, Mr. Patek. Kelly was programmed to feed off of your own
thoughts and behavior. He wasn’t acting. He never tried to manipulate you, or trick you.
Whenever we needed more than that, we gave him updates, things that would help us with our
research.”

Tyson made himself look over Kelly, who was now looking down at the ground and shuffling his
feet. When he felt Tyson’s gaze, he looked up and smiled blandly.

“With the success of this trial, the corporation has now decided to turn its focus elsewhere. We
lured you to the simulation clinic so we could explain everything. The simulation of Mr. Burke
was meant to be one last psychology experiment. We didn’t realize you would react the way
you did.”

Tyson turned around so he didn’t have to look at Kelly anymore. “So what happens now?”

The voice cleared its throat again. “Well, you have two options at this point. Either you can stay
in the simulation—”

No fucking way, Tyson thought vehemently. Why would he want that option? There was
nothing here for him anymore. There never had been.

“—Or, you can go back to the real world, of course, just as you left it.”

Something wasn’t clicking in Tyson’s head. That was an option?

 33

Was there anything in reality for him either, though? He thought about it. By this point, in this
virtual reality, he had essentially lived and died at least three or four times over, in terms of
average life expectancy. He would have his real, solid body back, but the mind and memories of
the person that lived within a simulation spanning almost two centuries.

What did he want?

Out of habit, Tyson found himself looking at towards Kelly for help before remembering he was
nothing more than pixels. Over a century of only having each other was a bitch for his muscle
memory to let go of. He felt another lump start to form in his throat and swallowed as hard as
he could against it.

He lied to you, Tyson thought angrily to himself. No, that wasn’t right. There was no Kelly in the
first place to have been able to lie. The whole thing had been a lie.

The voice cut through his thoughts again. “Well? What’ll it be?”

Tyson hesitated. “I—“

The voice sighed. “Let me put it this way. You’ll go back into 1978. You go back, you get to start
over. Whatever you want. The world is yours. We can even wipe your memory of this whole
ordeal for you, if you’d like. You can go live as a recluse in a forest. Whatever you want.”

“And no matter what you do, you will die. I can promise you that.”

Tyson’s mind went to himself before the simulation. Crow’s feet, acne scars, receding hairline
and all. The image was swimming in his mind’s eye, hard for him to see exact details of, but
there nonetheless.

He was 24. He could be married by 30. He would grow old, year after year, and watch his kids
do the same. If he was lucky, he and his wife could be buried together in a cemetery, with
matching gravestones. The grass would be a little more overgrown every time their kids came
and visited, until they too were gone.

The world would keep on turning. Linear.

If he stayed here, life would continue on in the same fashion as it had. He would go back to his
apartment with his savvy appliances, his annoying watch, his degrees framed and matted on
the wall. But Kelly would be gone. He would be truly alone. Forever.

Time would be stretched out infinitely, a circular thread that refused to break. Over and over
and over, with no chance of interruption. Tyson had a feeling the corporation wouldn’t offer to
let him out again. This was his chance to change his life, something he hadn’t been able to do in
centuries, something he had lost all hope for ever again.
 34

But he was supposed to do it with Kelly by his side.

“Mr. Patek. I need an answer. The experiment is over.”

“I’m going to stay here.” He held his breath, listening.

For once, there was silence from the voice.

Tyson stood up straighter and raised his voice. “I’m going to stay here. There’s nothing for me
back in reality. I can’t go back. I really thought I could. But I can’t.”

Tyson could say he was punishing himself. And he was. For being blind to the fact he was in a
fucking simulation, for not realizing Kelly was basically a figment of his imagination, for being
vain and stupid enough to wander into a random clinic in 1978 and let his life be taken over.

And that was the truth. But also, when faced with the choice, he found he didn’t really want to
die after all.

“Very well, Mr. Patek. The experiment has been completed, but you will remain here in the
simulation. The people behind the program will shut it down. You will be here forever.”

Tyson took a shaky breath, then another just to calm his heart. “I understand.”

The voice spoke again. “Out of sheer curiosity, would you mind explaining the reasoning behind
your decision?”

“Not really,” Tyson said.

“Very well, then.”

The buzzing was starting to get loud again, and the edges of the clinic were flickering rapidly.
Kelly was vibrating, blurring in and out of focus worse than ever. Tyson watched him and felt
nothing. The Kelly he knew was dead, as far as he was concerned.

That Kelly would never have given up. He would have turned to Tyson and said, Let’s figure this
out. I have a plan.

This Kelly smiled blankly at Tyson, saying nothing as the clinic started to crumble apart.

Tyson closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the room was back to the way it had always looked. Grey, sterile,
cold. The buzzing was gone. So was everyone else.
 35

That was that, then.

He stood up slowly and made his way back to the clinic entranceway, opening the door easily
into the blinding heat of the outside. He stopped and blinked. The perfect houses were. . .
gone. So were the hovercars and the sidewalks. Endless gray stretched out in front of him.

There was no city left at all.

His watch beeped at him. “Hello, Tyson.”

Tyson jumped, waiting for it to tell him the time and date like always. When it remained silent,
he took it off and examined it, bringing it up to his face.

“Watch, what’s the date today?”

“It’s whatever day you want it to be, Tyson. Whatever time, too.”

What? The heat must finally be getting to it. He cursed and clipped it back onto his wrist, wiping
his forehead with his shirt sleeve after.

A cloud suddenly appeared over the sun.

Tyson stared. He hadn’t seen a cloud for over a hundred years.

As he watched, the cloud was rapidly joined by more clouds, until they were a writhing, grey
mass. A drop of water hit the ground in front of him.

He ran for cover. A building appeared right in front of him, and he ducked into it. The only thing
they sold was umbrellas.

It slowly dawned on Tyson that this must have been the corporation’s parting gift to him. They
had wiped out anything that had previously existed as a result of the team’s efforts, leaving
Tyson in charge of a blank slate.

All traces of his life here with Mandy, with Kelly, and everyone else he had ever interacted with
here, were gone.

He had accepted that he would inhabit this world alone, that it would turn into an empty
museum of sorts, a place full of memories that would only be remembered by him. He was
prepared.

But now, for the first time in forever, Tyson found himself in charge of his life. Just in a slightly
different way that he had previously hoped for.
 36

He was excited about the future. His future, to do with as he pleased.

Outside the walls of the buildings, a clap of thunder rang out.

He smiled, grabbing an umbrella from the rack, and walked out the door.