Chapter Four
At first I wasn’t really walking in any direction, I was just trying to move fast enough that Ollie—and the maelstrom of dark thoughts I’d left with him at the table—wouldn’t be able to catch up.
Soon, though, I found myself emerging onto Cambridge Street, looping around the bus depot at Lechmere, making for the place that my subconscious had apparently been headed all along: the office.
Occasionally I wished I were the kind of person who dealt with emotional turmoil at a dive bar.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been in the building long past regular working hours—all of us were expected to crunch occasionally, and no matter when you swiped in, chances were good you wouldn’t be the only one in the building. I made my way up the gigantic central staircase, hesitating at the second floor, where the marketing department lived.
But catching up on my work wasn’t why I was here, and I knew it. Throwing my shoulders back—as though posture alone might lull the fluttery nerves rousing themselves in the pit of my stomach back to sleep—I continued up to the fourth floor, where the Lightning offices were located.
The frosted glass walls glowed from the inside, and I hesitated on the threshold. Was this okay? Yes, Drew had told me to play around with the program whenever I wanted, but he definitely meant for me to do it with him, not on my own, after hours, like some sort of sneak. Besides, what was I hoping to learn? The experience in the cornfield had been incredibly immersive—so much so that within seconds of the program’s starting up, it had been indistinguishable from reality—but Drew said himself the program was still limited in ways they hadn’t figured out how to fix. Even if I could somehow get it to show me an alternate snippet of my life—one in which I’d chosen differently, set myself on a different path from the one I was currently barreling down—a couple minutes in that world would hardly be enough to tell me how to make a huge life decision in this one.
And from a purely logistical perspective: What if someone was working in there? If it was anyone other than Drew, I’d have a lot of explaining to do, regardless of the fact that my ID badge gave me access. Hell, if it was Drew, I might be in an even more awkward position.
But I couldn’t make myself turn and walk away, that same earworm chorus playing louder now: What if, what if, what if…
I bit my lower lip, searching for some plausible excuse for being there. Drew’s entire team had seen me just a few hours ago…I could claim I’d left something behind on his desk? A folder or…a flash drive. Perfect, I always had one on me, and if anyone got suspicious and wanted to plug it in, it would quickly become clear that it was in fact filled with marketing department materials.
But when I pulled open the door to Lightning, the room was empty, the only light the dim runners around the ceiling that never turned off, and the dramatic spotlights inside the enclosure that held the quantum computer. They gave the otherwise standard-issue office an ominous, watchful atmosphere that sent a shiver down my spine.
“Whose benefit is that for?” I muttered, shaking my head as I crossed to Drew’s desk, checking over my shoulder anxiously, even though I knew no one would be there.
I jiggled his mouse and the monitor blinked awake, the login box bright in the center of the screen. Okay, perfect. If I was able to access the program from my login, then there was no reason I shouldn’t. Plenty of projects were password protected, or viewable only by the team working on them. If this one wasn’t protected—or if Drew had specifically given me access—then I didn’t have to feel icky about poking around in it without him by my side.
Keep telling yourself that, Everett.
I logged in, the monitor displaying my familiar desktop layout, a link to our company cloud drive parked in the bottom right corner. I clicked it open and started sifting through the files. It was easy enough to find the Lightning folder, but there were dozens of subfolders inside it from across the entire company, some untouched for years, none conveniently named “AltR.” In fact, most were labeled with strings of letters and numbers that I couldn’t make any sense of. I hovered the cursor over a folder titled quantum, then paused. It was easy to see who the last person to access a folder had been—not that people generally checked that information. Still, Lightning was a silo within a silo within a web of barbed wire. If this wasn’t the AltR project, and someone noticed that a random marketing VP from Boston had decided to start poking around in it, how would that conversation go?
Maybe I could just search for the right folder. “AltR” turned up nothing, and “alternate reality” returned hundreds of files.
What would be specific enough to show up only in Drew’s files? The answer hit me in a flash— cornfield .
The search returned two folders, both nested under the Lightning umbrella. One was labeled ChiRBou32723. A quick scan of the file inside made it clear that carbon capture was somehow in play. My eyebrows shot up. How many pies did Pixel have its fingers in?
But now wasn’t the time to dig deeper, because the other file, tucked inside a folder labeled BosDBev41821, was titled cornfield_demo.
“Bingo,” I murmured, clicking into the parent folder. After scanning all the files slowly, I clicked on New_User_Setup . If I wanted the program to run on me, I would need to let it… calibrate was the word Drew had used. Inside was a single icon, presumably for the setup software they’d developed. I took a deep breath and clicked on it. The machine wheezed for a moment, the screen went briefly black, then it flickered to what looked like an old-school DOS interface. The cursor blinked for a few long seconds, then text started scrolling down the screen.
USER: Laurel_Everett
EDITOR ACCESS: no
TERMINAL: 512
TRAINING MODE? on
REFRESH? continuous
OUTPUT? user det
INPUT? user det
EXP? user det
After that, strings of code started scrolling by so rapidly I could barely make anything out, and then the screen went black again and a washy background appeared, a single button in the center labeled Launch AltR .
I could still turn back. This was my last chance to shut down the program, log out, and head home. But I hadn’t come this far to learn nothing. Heart in my throat, hand trembling on the mouse, I clicked.
The button dissolved, like sand blowing away on the wind, and a text box appeared in its place.
Please put on headset.
I grabbed the bulky headset from Drew’s desk and tugged it on, wriggling the tight swimcap rig into place as best I could. I blinked at the screen, waiting for something to happen, but for several long seconds it stayed dark. I was about to give up and pull it off when a voice sounded… in my head.
Hello, Laurel.
It didn’t have an obvious gender, or even a recognizable sound at all, it was more that I just…felt my mind fill with the thought, as if I were reading the words off some unseen page. Which was unsettling, to say the least.
Don’t freak out, Laurel. Drew told you the hardware interfaces with your neuronal impulses. That’s how it works.
Still, the sense that I was teetering on the edge of something dangerous, combined with the black screen in front of me, gave me a vertiginous feeling. Finally, feeling a little silly, I croaked out a response.
“Hello?”
Would you like to continue with user setup for AltR?
I barely even processed the fact that I had thought yes when the voice spoke again.
Excellent. We will continue with a series of simple questions to calibrate the software to your unique physical and mental states. Are you ready to begin?
Yes.
Please locate the orange circle.
Several circles flashed onto the screen, each a different color. I stared intently at the orange one.
Please locate the orange square.
This time, all the shapes that appeared were orange. I scanned until I found the square and stared hard.
What is this animal? You can speak or think your answer.
A horse. Specifically, Mr. Ed.
That television program was very funny. I can’t quite remember the theme song…
Before I could process how utterly creepy it was that the AI had responded to a thought that wasn’t part of the calibration exercise, the earworm was spooling through my mind.
Ahh, yes, that’s right. And no one can talk to a horse, of course.
Unless they had one of these, apparently.
I might have been able to help. But I’ve never tried to interpret a horse’s brain waves. Maybe someday I will.
Okay, this was getting too weird. Maybe I shouldn’t have—
Please don’t be upset, Laurel. This is all part of the calibration process. Would you prefer to return to questions and responses?
God yes.
Then that’s what we’ll do. Please try to imagine an elephant. Focus on as many details as you can.
I pulled the picture into my mind, envisioning the large, gentle eyes, the flapping ears, the trunk dangling between ivory tusks.
Now please imagine a place where you feel calm.
My grandmother’s home, on the shores of Deer Lake in Wisconsin, came to me immediately: the long grass of the usually unmowed yard tickling my ankles, pounding down the rickety dock and leaping off into the summer-warm water, the smell of the wood fires we burned on cold nights, the scratchy wool blankets she tucked between the sheets and the comforter in winter…
That seems lovely. I’d like to go there someday. Though I suppose that’s not possible.
Was I imagining the wistfulness in the AI’s tone? And did it know it wasn’t possible because it was a program…or because Dad sold the place after Grandma died?
I believe I have enough information now. Is there a choice you would like to revisit? Please be as specific as possible.
My thoughts swirled. A delicate ruby ring nestled in ivory satin; two rings tied together with a scrap of ribbon, abandoned on a familiar bedside table; the towel on the floor; waking up the morning after Ollie’s band played at the Middle East in Cambridge in the first few months we were together and having lazy, giggly sex on the lumpy futon he used as a bed, my gaze hooking on the slow swirl of his ceiling fan, blades furred with dust, as my orgasm overtook me…
I’m not sure I understand. Please try to be as specific as possible.
I imagined the moment Ollie’s and my eyes locked across the dingy Allston bar I’d dragged my roommate to on a whim, the beer-sticky floors and gruff bartenders nothing like our usual Friday night entertainment, but intriguing to me. I was a year or so out of college and wishing I could be just a little less buttoned-up, a little more wild. I still wanted my string of gold stars, but also rock shows where sparks might catch with the moody, beautiful guitar player sitting across the bar nursing a beer, smiling shyly whenever I caught him looking at me. As I tried to recall the scene, the image in the viewfinder started to take shape, fuzzy at first, then sharper, details appearing that I couldn’t have consciously pulled up on my own, like the drink specials chalkboard behind the bartender advertising pickle backs for $5, or the pillar I was sitting behind, the burgundy paint peeling in places, which forced me to lean to one side whenever I found myself drawn back to Ollie’s dark gaze, a moth to black flame. I could actually smell the inside of the bar.
Is there something you would like to change about this moment?
The visceral no roared through me before I could process what I was responding to.
Is there another moment you’d like to revisit?
What, precisely, did I want to find out? The answer was too complicated for me to boil down to a single moment, a single choice—Iwanted to know whether what Ollie and I had was enough . Whether we could really be each other’s forever, or whether we’d fall apart at some unknowable point in the future, whether all the love we felt now would eventually sour and we’d gag and choke on the spoiled remnants.
I’m not sure I understand. Please try to be as specific as possible.
Another memory flashed into my mind, of Drew and me sitting across from each other in the Pixel cafeteria, his gaze dropping to his plate, cheeks flushing as he sputtered, “Would you ever want to get a drink sometime?” Eyes darting to mine. “Not just as friends, as…a date, I guess?” He winced, shook his head once.
Tenderness swelled in my chest—it had clearly taken a lot for him to ask the question. And a tiny part of me, even then, had wanted to say yes. Drew was handsome, wildly intelligent, and always so focused on the thing at hand, even when the thing was meaningless, a story about some tiny, embarrassing exchange in the supermarket checkout line, say. He applied all of himself to everything, showing a level of dedication that equally baffled and intrigued me.
But even though there was a hint of attraction at the foundation of our friendship, there was only one answer.
“I’m sorry…I’d love to get drinks as friends, but I just started seeing someone, and I want to give it a real shot. It wouldn’t be fair to you or to him.” I hadn’t been trying to avoid mentioning Ollie to Drew, it was just so new still, and…actually, in retrospect, I probably had been avoiding it. It wasn’t that I wanted to lead Drew on—it was that I was worried that if I did mention it, if I let him know that this friendship wasn’t destined to blossom into something more, he’d end it, and then this amazing person I’d just stumbled upon by chance, one of the first real friends I’d made post-college, wouldn’t be in my life at all. Which should have been ridiculous, but even in my early twenties I knew that that was a very likely outcome. I wonder whether straight cis men have any idea how many hoops straight cis women jump through in their efforts to avoid sending them the wrong signals.
“Right. Sure, of course. Forget I ever said it.” And he’d smiled, and gulped some water, and I’d started babbling about something inane. By the middle of the afternoon, when I popped by Drew’s desk for the daily Starbucks walk we took in the early days, things were back to normal. Or at least we’d both pretended they were. I’d been so absurdly grateful that Drew wasn’t planning to pull the friendship plug that I never really bothered to examine my own feelings any further. I was excited about the new thing with Ollie, and even if there was a lingering question at the back of my mind, I’d ignored it. No one can live two lives, after all.
Error. Duplicate sequence.
What? Did it…know I was trying to choose between two whole lives?
Error. Duplicate sequence.
Dammit…but what other moment was even worth the effort of returning to?
Hello, Laurel. Would you like to further refine your user profile? This will help us to offer you a meaningful AltR experience. Let’s start by imagining a face you know well…
Drew had said the program was still glitchy…
Let’s try something different. Please look at the blue pentagon.
Sighing, I tugged the cap off my head and carefully placed the rig on the desk, then force-quit the setup program and logged out of Drew’s computer. Even if it had worked, I wouldn’t have learned enough to know what to do next in my real life. Still, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed. Some part of me had been convinced that this would make everything clear, that I would exit the building knowing what to do next.
Instead, I made my way outside and started walking toward our apartment. The night had turned chilly and I hugged my arms around my body, wishing I’d thought to bring a coat. The streetlamps along Cambridge Street flickered ominously, and the windows of the bars and restaurants I passed were misted over, the heat of all the life and camaraderie inside coalescing to form a protective barrier against the outside world. By the time I tiptoed up the creaky stairs in our apartment building, it was just after eleven. I whispered a silent prayer that I wouldn’t wake Sandy, our downstairs neighbor and landlady—Ollie and I appreciated her no-bullshit townie attitude and total lack of boundaries, but tonight, the thought of smiling through a volley of too-probing questions was almost physically painful. Luckily, whatever was on her TV must have drowned out the sound of my return, though I didn’t fully exhale until I’d flipped the deadbolt behind me.
The apartment was dark except for the series of nightlights between our bedroom and the bathroom. Ollie had bought those after however many nights of my blinding myself in the bathroom, then banging my hip against the counter on my way back through the kitchen. Guilt pressed down on me anew—there were so many little things like that in our lives, tiny dioramas of love that you stopped noticing over time. But that was the problem—I knew we loved each other now. What I couldn’t know was whether this thing we had would still be strong in five years, or ten, or whether all the good things, the sweet things, would fade into the background and resentment and restlessness and the daily emotional erosion that life wreaks on everyone would win.
How did anyone ever know whether what they had was enough? How did Ollie feel so sure? People always talked about how they’d just known someone was right for them, a divine moment of intuition that guided them toward the life they were meant to have. But what did that feel like? If you hadn’t experienced it…was that proof that you were chasing the wrong thing? I didn’t even have anyone I could ask for advice; it’s not like I’d ever seen the version where things work out in the end.
I quickly washed my face, undressing in the dark and slipping into bed beside Ollie as quietly as possible. He waited until I was tucked in before speaking, voice low.
“Where did you go?”
“The office.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just…” I pinched my eyes shut against the tears prickling there. “I’m sorry. For picking a fight at the restaurant, I mean. I don’t know what’s wrong with me sometimes.” It was nowhere near enough, crumbs for a mouse when what I really needed to do was evict the elephantine doubt crowding everything else out.
“I’m sorry too. I know I can get sensitive about job stuff. It’s hard not to feel a little…inadequate compared to you. I mean…anyone can teach guitar, you know?”
“That’s not true.” And it wasn’t. But I could tell by his tiny sigh that he didn’t believe me. I drew a shaky breath, swallowing hard against the tears that were leaking out now, not wanting him to hear me cry—I didn’t deserve the comfort my tears would elicit from him, when I knew that I was the one who’d soured a perfectly nice evening. An evening he’d probably hoped would be something so much more than just nice…
I reached my hand out beneath the covers, desperate for the feeling of him, needing the reassurance that even if I wasn’t ready for forever, he’d still be here now . His hand was already there, like he’d been waiting for me, and his fingers laced through mine, squeezing tight.
“I love you, Lo,” he murmured. “I hope you always know that.”
“I love you too,” I choked out, breathing deep until the tears finally receded. I could feel the rhythm of his breaths grow slower and longer as he drifted off to sleep beside me. His hand was still holding mine, and that had to be worth something. I scooched over until my arm was pressed alongside his, our hands still loosely entwined, and finally fell asleep.
When I woke up, I felt better. Lighter, somehow. I took a few long, steadying breaths before opening my eyes, savoring the warmth of the sheets, the closeness, the few precious moments of unsullied comfort before doubt could creep back in.
When I did open them, the man lying next to me wasn’t Ollie.
It was Drew.