Nina

Psychopath assholes go postal and it’s an apocalyptic blood orgy.  Another army-of-darkness attempt at the Guinness Book of World Records.  The staccato popping of assault rifles.  Shock, hysteria, screaming.  The smell of gunpowder, the smell of blood, the smell of fear, of death.  When the magazines are empty, kamikaze vests detonate.  Deafening blasts, then surreal ear ringing quiet.  Shrapnel, ripped flesh, entrails, brains and blood, sticky slippery blood, blood spattered all over the floor, all over the seats, sprayed all over the walls.  Frenzied panicked stampede.  Nina is shoved pushed and pulled through a stew of butchered souls.  Reality overkill.  Brain overload.  Time stretches, the world hallucinates.  Her mind is a whirlwind of insane sensations observed from somewhere else.  Dread, terror, horror, fear.  The sticky slippery blood, the bowels, the exploded brains, the guts, the gore.  She remembers clearly.  She remembers all of it.  The memories violate her.  The images contaminate her.  They pollute her mind.  Like a virus they infect her soul.  They’ve stripped her of who she was before.  She wants to rip them out like a cancerous growth.  But memories are spectral phantoms.  How do you rip out a phantom?  How do you stop your mind, your infested, infected, corrupted mind?  Stop!  Please, stop!  But it doesn’t stop.  Instead, round and round it goes, polluted poisoned memories poisoning the day, poisoning the night.  Round and round.  It never stops.

         “Nina?”

         “Oh, Audrey! It’s you.  You startled me.”  Nina looked at her friend, then down at her hands.  She noticed she’d been folding her paisley teal scarf.  She wasn’t sure why.

         “Nina, I’ve been here for the last ten minutes,” Audrey said, concerned.

         “Really?”  Nina’s eyes were blank.

         Audrey nodded.  Maybe it was too soon for Nina to go home.

         “I’m sorry,” Nina lowered her eyes. “I just had flashback.”

         It had been two months, but still flashbacks and nightmares haunted Nina.

         “But…” Audrey stopped herself.  Again.  She kept avoiding it.  Every time she visited Nina she swore to herself she’d tell her, but didn’t.  Couldn’t.  How could she tell her?  How could she tell Nina that she hadn’t experienced any of it because she hadn’t been there?  Well, okay, Nina had been there, but not there.  She hadn’t waded through a stew of butchered souls.  The memories haunting her were phantoms.  The army-of-darkness assholes had busted into the Ritz on the orchestra floor and that’s where the slaughter happened.  That’s where Audrey had been, dancing on the orchestral killing floor.  Nina had been up on the balcony, and when the shit hit the fan, a frenzied stampede carried her to the fire-exit, and straight down to the street.  Crushed by the mob maybe, stumbling down stairs maybe, but no meat-grinder gore in her path.  No showers of blood and shredded flesh sprayed in her face.  That had been Audrey’s face.

         “…am I too early?” Audrey asked instead.  She scanned the dismal little room.  It creeped her out.  She knew she’d been only one tiny step from qualifying for involuntary herself.  Just the smell creeped her out.  Unpleasant institutional.  Okay, it could be worse.  Nina was just one card short of a deck, not barking mad.  She had a private room, visitors allowed, and not too many rules as long as she stuck around and popped her pills.  One for breakfast.  Two for lunch.  Two more after dinner.  Sweet dreams after those.

         “No, no... I’m all packed.”  Nina gestured towards an open suitcase that wasn’t packed.  “Well, almost, but hey, I don’t have too much stuff.  Thanks for coming to take me home, by the way.  I just couldn’t handle facing my parents. They get so freaked out about me it just makes it worse.  At least you understand.”

         Understand?  Well, yeah…and no.  You’re the one who’s been recovering here, but I’m the one who was there!  Audrey never did seek help for post-traumatic stress disorder.  Having grown up with a shrink for a father, she was allergic to anything shrink related; as far as she was concerned it was all bullshit.  Did that mean she was in denial?  Had she suppressed the horror?  Or channeled it into something?  Like popping tripTabs and deepFreaking the net?

When the shit hit the fan, Nina and Audrey, like true besties, had been sharing the concert experience from their different vantage points, sharing via their chips.  Fixed to the temple, chips sparkled like expensive gems, looked totally razz and were the ultimate micro quantum computer VR device.  They were a net to mind link, digital dropped directly into the brain for in-your-face experiences.  Virtual and Real scarcely distinguishable.  But, in the throes of extreme terror, virtual and Real merged into a crazed nightmare.  Thinking about it later, it occurred to Audrey that when the shooting started something must have short-circuited and the chip on Nina’s forehead had linked to Audrey’s in a direct mind-to-mind Audrey-to-Nina brain current, no filter.  Not supposed to happen.  It can’t happen.  Brain-to-brain direct is impossible, corporate tech eyeTs swear.  Seriously, it just can’t happen.  There are a thousand fail-safe firewalls built into a chip’s software to prevent such an event.  Maybe.  Because it did happen.  Maybe a crap-ton of adrenaline screwed with digital and messed with the firewalls.  Maybe.  Whatever, who knows.  The point is the eyeTs are full of shit because it did happen.  Suddenly it was all I am me you are me, memories, images, horror, terror, mixed mashed and fused together in a demented digital fuckup.

“So did they return your chip?”  Only a cyberJock like Audrey would ask. 

         “Yeah,” Nina dug into a side pocket in the suitcase and apathetically pulled it out.  “But I can’t ever wear it again, I’m afraid I’d be reliving all those memories…I can’t, I just can’t.”

         “Well, when you’re ready…but…” This really isn’t fair to Nina.  Or is it?  No, I must tell her.  I have to get it over with.  Audrey took a deep breath.  “We need to…talk about that…I’m sorry Nina, I’ve been avoiding it, but I really can’t anymore.  I must do it, must tell you.  It’s hard, so I’ll just come out and say it.  Those memories of yours?  They’re not really yours…”

         Nina didn’t answer.

         “Actually…” Audrey hesitated a moment, “…those memories are mine.”

         “Audrey, what the fuck are you talking about?  What do you mean they’re yours?”

         “What do you remember of that night?”

         “Audrey, I don’t want to remember.  I’m trying hard not to—remembering is what landed me here.”

         “Nina, you were on the balcony.  Nothing happened on the balcony.  I was on the dance floor.  It all happened there.  But our chips must have fused for a moment.  I don’t know why, I can’t explain it, but it was like a wormhole connected our minds.”

         “That’s ridiculous, Audrey.  Listen to yourself!  Are you on dreamWater?  I know what I remember!”

         Mind-connecting wormholes?  Seriously?  Audrey sounded like she was high and falling into a rabbit hole.  If you know what you see but you don’t see what you know…  if what you see is not what you know… if what you know is not what you see… if you know what isn’t shown and you see what isn’t known… such bullshit!  It’s enough to give anyone a headache.  Wormholes, rabbit holes, sink-holes, fox holes, manholes, assholes, whatever!  Talk of holes were the last thing Nina wanted right now.  Or needed.  Instead, she inspected the closet, then bent down to look under the bed.  Audrey wasn’t sure if this was paranoia or if she was just checking for wayward socks.  Or just not dealing with what she had just told her.  Nina’s expression was blank and distant.  Her neurological tremor was obvious.  She shut her suitcase, then her eyes.

                                                                 ***

Audrey slipped from Real to SIM (simulated reality) and found herself on the forgotten digital dock on the forgotten digital lake.  She hadn’t met Nina here in ages, and it used to be such an important routine for them.  They had always liked meeting here.  A first version SIM freeware website, the dock and the lake now lay in a dusty ancient corner of the net, way north of page ten thousand in search engine results; no one else came anymore.  They’d been hanging here in this secluded site, just the two of them, since they were SIM enraptured kids.  An eternal forever-summer sun washed everything in bright technicolour optimism.  The surf rolled in, rolled out, over and over again, always the same waves, the same sequence, the sun sparkling in the same places in the same patterns.  The regularity of the ancient program was strangely comforting.  Audrey dipped her hand in the imaginary water, watched the fractal ripples and counted the seconds until the fish jumped.  Poor Nina, I haven’t been there for her.  Weeks had passed, they hadn’t seen each other, and barely communicated.

Nina slipped in and Audrey sat up to face her.  The unforgiving sunlight over-exposed their faces like some long-ago faded memory.  Audrey was struck by how drained and pale Nina looked, even in this archaic simulation software’s bleached-out palette.  At least she was wearing her chip again and she was enrolled in summer session at the University, making up for her lost semester. 

         “Hi Nina, I’m so glad you came.  I’m sorry it took this long.  We should have done this sooner, a lot sooner.”

         “Time passes, Audrey, and things change.”

         Yeah, time passes and things change, Audrey thought wistfully.  Has it passed enough for her awful memories to be in the rear-view mirror?  “But it doesn’t mean we have to become strangers.”

         “Maybe I’ve been afraid...” Nina’s eyes seemed to look through Audrey.

         “Afraid?  To talk to me?  Nina!  You’re my best friend!”

         “Or I was…I don’t know, it’s just that, well, the last time I saw you, when you picked me up…what you said…”

         “I’m sorry, Nina, but weird as it is, it’s true...”

         “…what you said made me feel there’s someone in my head, someone not me.”

         “Nina, I know it must be really freaky, but there’s an explanation…”

         “Yeah, sure, but you haven’t got one, do you?  And anyway, I’m not sure explanations matter because what happened, or what you say happened, made me feel completely invalidated…like I’m not me.  How can I be if what I know I experienced you insist I didn’t.  I mean, what’s true?  I’m still not sure…were you there…was I there?  If memories can be planted and seem totally real, how do we know anything?  Were the memories really yours?  Werethey?  They could have been yours, might have been, but do I know for sure?  It’s all so bizarre, so creepy, so scary.  I’ve thought about it, a lot, I’ve obsessed endlessly, and then summer school started, and the class I’m taking got me thinking some more.  It’s about the last North American election, you know, when Walt Disney Inc. was elected president.”

         “And?”

         “It’s considered the first post-Real election, with Real and deepfake so completely mixed up there was no way to tell what speech, what holo, what advert, what website, what SIM, what video, even what fact-check, was true.  You could believe everything, you could believe nothing, but it didn’t matter.  It was all the same, all a mad chimera of delusions and illusions.  It was so totally a Disney election, all fantasy, deception and illusion.”

         “Yeah, no wonder Mickey Mouse won,” Audrey quipped.

         “Exactly.  So, like I said, it got me thinking: Real, not Real—how can you tell?  Especially if stuff is broadcast directly into your mind through your chip.  Did you experience what you think you experienced?  Or is it what someone wants you to think you experienced?  Someone’s in your head, but it’s not you, right?  SIM or Real?  I mean, it’s got to be high quality SIM if it’s to fool you so totally, which means it’s expensive, but there are plenty of corps and oligarchs out there that can afford that.”

         “I see what you’re getting at, Nina, but it’s pretty dark, downright paranoid,” Audrey looked at Nina skeptically.  “Are you taking your meds?”

         “Audrey!”

         “I’m sorry Nina, I didn’t mean it like that, but I’m usually the one who’s paranoid, not you.”

         “Yeah, well with all your deepFreaking you should be.  But paranoia has nothing to do with it!  Think about it.  How do you know any of it happened to us?  I mean, the whole Ritz thing.  Because, well, if what I experienced wasn’t Real, if what you experience isn’t necessarily what happened, how do you know what did happen?  Or if anythinghappened?  Maybe the Ritz didn’t happen, none of it, and something else did.”

         “Nina, I was there, you were there!  And it was all over the news!”

         “I was there, but you say my memory was modified.  So, what about yours?  How do you know yours wasn’t?  And the news?  What if it was all a deepfake?”

         “Nina, you worry me!”

         “I do, or is it what I’m saying?  Audrey, we walked into the Ritz, we walked out…isn’t that all we really know?”

         “But outside, when we got out, the streets were full of CivDef and cops and emergency vehicles and news vans…you can’t deepfake all that, and the news, which ran non-stop for days.”

         “Why not?  You can’t explain why our two chips connected in a wormhole, as you put it.  So, what if maybe it wasn’t just our two chips?  What if it was a huge wormhole and it was everybody’s chips?  What if the entire Ritz was sent down a rabbit hole?  Or the entire planet?  What if this is proof that we are all actually living in a simulation?  You know, it’s the old story where you don’t know if you’re a butterfly dreaming it’s you, or you dreaming you’re a butterfly, or you dreaming it’s you dreaming you’re a butterfly, I mean, this can turn into a hall of endless mirrors, and the truth is, we haven’t got a clue…maybe the butterfly dreaming is also an illusion and you’ve been a tadpole or some such shit all along.”

         “Nina!  Have you been popping tripTabs?”

         “Maybe I downed a shot of dreamWater before I came here,” Nina looked a little sheepish, “maybe because now I get why you pop tripTabs and deepFreak the net… I mean why not, if the whole world’s a rabbit-hole anyway?”