Hologram Kebab - Part 2
Previously on Hologram kebab:
Keaton revealed to Anya that she is trapped inside a post-life simulation that he bought her for their anniversary.
Anya has almost finished her pretend kebab.
Keaton is still a dickhead.
“The backups,” Anya said, reaching the conclusion before Keaton had the chance.
“Our three year anniversary. I gave you the rights to a backup locket of me,” Keaton added.
“And I did the same,” Anya said, “In case one of us died.”
“So the other wouldn’t be lonely,” Keaton added.
“So we’d never live alone,” Anya finished. She remembered their backup vows and smiled. She relaxed a little, allowing her feet to reach the thick carpet she knew now wasn’t really there. It felt real. She felt around the sofa for some giveaway, some fragment of unreality that would have given it all away had Keaton not appeared. There was nothing. The simulation had every last detail. She wondered how long she would have gone on not noticing, had Keaton not intervened. She wondered if she had been here for months, repeating the same day, forgetting and waking up again.
“You can’t tell it’s a sim, because all this is real,” Keaton said.
“What?”
“I was messing with you babe. It was me that died.”
Anya would have been surprised, but Keaton was never a good liar.
“Bullshit,” Anya said, smiling. She recognised Keaton’s old habit, lying to make her happy, which eventually evolved into making horrid jokes and twisting conversation so she would forget what was right and what was wrong. It was insidious. It worked in the beginning, not now, but it was a nice bit of nostalgia. Even if it did constitute gaslighting.
“You pick today to get your sense of humour back?” Anya said.
“Today has been a few months long, on my end,” Keaton admitted.
“So where am I? Where am I buried?” Anya asked.
“That’s the thing. You’re not, yet. They wanted to do a thing with stem cells. Your body out there is brain dead, on ice. I’m sat next to you, it, now.”
“It?”
“Sorry. Your body. You.”
“So you’re talking into the backup locket,” Anya said.
“Yeah.”
“And my actual body is still alive?”
“Yeah. Kind of. You’re on her chest right now, the locket.”
“So what’s the plan, plug the locket into my body and hope they merge?”
“Something like that. We’ve had this conversation so many times now.”
“Because it doesn’t work?” Anya asked.
“Yeah. There’s only so many times they can try it before it’s not worth trying again. Between you and me I heard they tested this on soldiers, a few tries too many and they lose their minds.”
“That’s reassuring,” Anya said.
“Yeah.” Keaton was noticeably uncomfortable now, as if he was at a zoo and had suddenly fallen into an exhibit. Anya thought about everything.
“Could being here damage your head?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Keaton lied.
“But I’m not a complete thing am I? I’m not a full person. The locket company, they said it was just an impression, like an interactive phone call.”
“That’s true,” Keaton said, “It’s… you’re not, how should I say this. They think a locket might be just enough to wake up your brain, like a familiar image refreshing someone’s memory, but the implant never sticks. It’s like you and her are two different beings, two different minds,” he said.
The simulation even picked up his nervous swaying.
“There’s an argument that these things might be conscious, if they pick up enough data, that humans are just lists of experiences.”
“Heavy,” Anya said.
“Very.”
“Is this the last time the doctors will try?” Anya asked plainly. Keaton struggled against the confidence of her question.
“We’re getting close. There’s only so long they can keep a body for, if there’s nobody in there talking to it, it just withers away. But they say the locket might have legal personhood or something.”
“In which case there will be two of me,” Anya said.
“Yeah. They say they have a mind of their own.”
“Sort of like your dick then?”
“Anya, please.”
“It’s got complicated since I died hasn’t it?”
“Yeah. There’s been stuff on the news. Some kid’s locket malfunctioned. People think it’s alive. He says it’s his best friend.”
“And you never told me this before, in other loops?”
“Not in this much detail, no,” Keaton admitted. “I was advised not to shock you. This is sort of my last resort babe. Sorry, Anya.”
“It’s okay,” Anya said. The pair lurked in a dark silence for what felt like minutes. Anya thought about the situation, about the fake kebab and the fake hangover and the fake sofa. Keaton loomed like an omen of death, still standing under the chandelier. Anya wondered briefly if the dick pic was fake too, if it was some nightmare she was having, then remembered it was her last memory. She vowed that if she ever climbed out of this locket, it would be Hannah’s last memory too (she had sent her own nude photograph back to Keaton, before deciding to confess).
Anya looked at the kebab and concentrated on it. Briefly she thought it flickered, that its colours split into dizzying slices of information. She pulled a strip loose and bit into it. It didn’t taste of hologram, whatever holograms might taste like.
“Where did I die?” she finally asked.
“Liverpool Street. Why?” Keaton said. Anya thought about the answer for a minute, making herself comfortable in the fake sofa.
“When did I get hit?”
“Three AM,” Keaton said. Anya nodded and moved the ideas about inside her imaginary head. She thought about Liverpool street and the bars and the restaurants nearby, of all the memories she had forged there.
“They’re not different personalities, they’re different moods,” she explained.
“A doc said something like that, but it’s pseudoscience. The others dismissed it.”
“Is it? This locket of me captured the most recent recording, of me being pissed off before that night out. It’s filled in the details after, lazily copy-pasted other nights out into my memories. But it doesn’t align with reality,” Anya said.
“Why not?” Keaton asked. He moved to sit on one of the other chairs. His body floated above it briefly before being properly placed. He clicked onto it like a Lego person. It was obvious now, the little broken details the locket would make her forget couldn’t be forgotten now that she knew she was inside one.
“Because I’m angry in this backup. But my old mind, in my real body, it won’t fit with that.”
“How do you know?” Keaton asked.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
Anya laughed in frustration, saying, “Liverpool Street.”
“And?” Keaton asked. Anya threw the remaining strip of kebab at his head. The locket permitted her the collision. Keaton’s head became solid so that the kebab meat could stick to it. Anya shook her head and said, “Where we had our first date, dickhead. Saturn Bar.”
“Fucking hell!” Keaton said.
“Seriously. You forgot that?” Anya asked.
“I don’t do street names, you know this.”
“It was our first fucking date, make a fucking exception.”
“Sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter. My mind, the sentimental bitch. She went there because she was angry at you, but I bet she didn’t leave angry,” Anya said. She held back tears as she watched the realisation grow on Keaton’s imaginary face.
“You were sad,” Keaton said.
“Of course I was, probably, you dickhead.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Just, tell the doctors I worked it out. I want to try downloading into my body again.”
“Okay.”
“But not right now,” Anya said. “I’ve got to work on it. If she died sad and I’m alive angry, we’re incompatible. I’ve got to get sad.”
“Okay,” Keaton said, confused. Anya set out her plan.
“Before you go, tell me you miss us again, that you miss how things used to be when we were still falling in love, when we hadn’t made the whole journey yet, when there was stuff left to discover in each of our lives. When there was mystery. Remind me of it. Remind me of every moment we spent not talking, and every silence wasted. Tell me about those books you read. Tell me the story of how my parents didn’t approve of you because of your stupid hair and that band you started.”
Anya was almost crying now.
“Tell me about all of it, every breakfast we made for each other. Every hardship we faced together. And then Keaton, and only then, plug me back in.”
“We’re breaking up when you wake up aren’t we?” Keaton said meekly.
“Dickhead.” Anya shook her head and laughed whilst crying. Keaton had not the capacity to translate this mix of signs.
“What?”
“Resurrection first, couple’s counselling later. Shut up and make me sad,” Anya snapped back. Keaton laughed through barely suppressed tears and stood up. In the distance Anya felt the colour bleeding from the buildings outside the windows, and sensed a glimmer of hope building inside her. The hologram kebab flickered on her lap. Quietly she suppressed her hope of escape, trying to become who she was before her mind and body were split in two.
“I miss when we used to leave each other letters in the mornings,” Keaton said limply, reminding Anya of the lover’s ritual that had slowly died over the course of their relationship.
“Keep going,” Anya wiped a tear on her imaginary shirt.
“When you lost your job, I stayed up looking for freelance things for you, when you were asleep. I never told you because I never found anything,” Keaton said.
“I think you’ll always be a cheat,” Anya said. “It’s in your nature. Maybe it’s in mine too. You made me happy for a slice of my life but that slice has slipped away from under us.”
“I like to think there’s hope,” Keaton said. Anya smiled sadly at him like he was some hopeless little animal, but knowing he was much worse. She looked down at the kebab sauce in her fake hands and remembered her first date with Keaton, how she went home and told her friends that he might be the one, that he might save her from her boring life. He wasn’t, and he didn’t. That was her job, to save herself, to pull herself up by her bootstraps. It was the same story now, only this time she would have to use him to climb out from digital purgatory.
She pushed herself to remember how crushed and scared she felt after their first argument, and the second and the third and fourth and fifth argument, and how they all blended into one long stream of grievances like blood from multiple wounds, and how it all came out in a stream when alcohol was involved or when emotions were high.
Privately Anya told herself what she was really sad about. Not losing Keaton, but losing whatever parts of herself she had once given to him that she knew she would leave behind, that he would keep as souvenirs, knowingly or not, secreted upon his person like black market organs in some cartoonish detective movie. She was sad because she could feel herself falling apart, at every moment of her life. She was completely unreal now, but the process of becoming unreal had been happening long before she died. She presumed it had started when she first set foot in school. It was a slow erosion of the self, a forced conformity that had gotten her to the point where she actually convinced herself that Keaton was a potential mate for life. He wasn’t, and in her mindless conformity Anya wondered if she had used him just as much as he had used her, if her jobs and her friends and her wants and needs were really something tacked on, if her real self was down here now, in the locket.
She thought about her hobbies and her music taste, how certain songs were now poisoned by memories associated with them, how she regretted showing Keaton her favourite camping location because now his body was imprinted on it like a bad stain.
Lastly, she thought about how she hated being in love, but how when she wasn’t in love she hated being alone even more. She focused on her fear of being alone, of being unwanted, of waking up unloved. The isolation inside the locket felt very much like the isolation inside her own mind. This was not something she would admit to anyone, but she had to admit it to her alternate self now, if only to survive and merge with some higher reality.
Keaton vanished from the room.
Outside, the doctors prepared Anya’s body for transfer.
END
I hope that was sufficiently weird. It’s one of my favourite recent stories, balancing rude comedy with the dark philosophical stuff I enjoy so much. I’m always happiest when I can do both of those things at the same time.
A lot of people don’t ‘get’ darker or weirder comedy, but to me, a story is a lens we adapt to in order to see the world a different way, and a comedy story is simply a newer shape of lens. A dark comedy story is a weird, rare type of lens that can take a while to get used to, but it shows the world from a new angle.
If you enjoy seeing the world slightly warped or askew, I’m your guy.
We’re almost at 500 subscribers here at TheWeirdWorlds. That means I’ll soon be giving away a signed copy of WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? to someone.
I can also find something else to give away. Feel free to suggest something.
-Phillip