Voice of the Metaverse

By The Narrator

To You, who are just like him.

1

I was not always this way. Often, in my life I lived quite content with the world as I saw it. My eyes had not yet seen what I found so worthy of contempt. It was as if I lived wearing colored glasses, filtering out all things wrong in my life—no, not just my life, as you might want me to believe, this life. My life, her life, your life. It is all wrong and I will show you.

Perhaps the most egregious horrors of my life occurred while I was still a child, a blissfully ignorant child. My parents loved me, or so they say. I do not believe them now. How could I? Not after what I have seen. They afforded to me every necessity and amenity a young girl could want. That in itself might have been the crux of their hatred toward me—as I know that is truly what they feel—the lack of trust in my ability to arise and learn from experience. I grew up soft and isolated from reality. It was not until my first years of college that I saw the truth.

“Do you have everything you need, dear?” My father said to me as he stood in the doorway of that cramped dorm.

“Yes, dad, I have everything. The same as you asked the last five times,” I said. My father always did that. I thought it was because he cared, but no, he had no trust in my capability.

“Okay, okay, just making sure you’re fine.”

My mom gave my dad a look, the same look she gave him whenever he threatened to reveal their façade to me, and said, “Let her be. She’ll be fine without us for a few months. We’ll see her again soon, for Thanksgiving, right?” She turned to me.

“Right,” I answered, genuinely excited to meet them for the holiday, the last time I remember feeling such a way.

“Well…” My dad stopped short, feigned emotion caught in his throat.

“Bye dad. Bye mom,” I said, giving my dad a hug, “I love you.” And I meant it.

“Bye dear, do well,” my father said.

“Goodbye, we love you too,” my mother said, a lie.

They lingered for longer than I thought I would want them to, but I also wanted them to stay. My entire life I lived in the world of their creation and for the first time, I stepped away from it. New ideas stared me down with staggering opposition. The worldview I had developed from the moment of my birth to the moment of my first true departure from nurturing suffocation threatened to collapse. They failed me. I admit that. They did not prepare me for the absolute hell that inhabits the reality they hid from me. I might have remained ignorant to my truth if they had only opened the door to let in a bit of the viciousness of your world. Instead, they allowed me to live in ignorance and in lies. Lies that I can never forgive them for telling me. And now I suffer for lack of ignorance.

The first few months went by without interest. I attended my classes and focused on my schoolwork. Then, in my English literature class, the teacher gave to me a book to read. I do not remember the book itself; it was not a great book nor one even worth remembering. The book mattered because it first injected into my mind the idea of the metaverse. A place where all thought could become reality. Where reality was nothing more than a blank canvas on which anyone could draft their masterpiece. When I put the book down, I stepped outside into the cool, sunny autumn day. The leaves changed, though still mostly green, some reddish and orange hues crept through the canopies. The wind blew just enough to provide a comfortable flow of air that kept the sun from warming me too much. As I walked to get my lunch, I thought, This is the world we must live in? How beautiful it is. And how naïve I was. What use do we have for a metaverse when our own world is so perfect? I had been so thoroughly shielded from the atrocities of your reality that I could not even comprehend the horror of what happened to me that day.

My headphones did a perfect job of blocking the outside world. I listened to music while I walked around campus. I do not remember what band, or what genre even, that was all so long ago, but I walked about in my bubble of innocence. The car sped through the light and hit me as I stared down at my phone, reading an email my mother sent me. I woke up in a hospital bed, a brace tightened around my waist and back. The room was dark, darker than I thought possible. Even with the fluorescent lights streaming in from under the door, I could feel the weight of something real laying over the room, dousing the lights. I was alone and everything hurt. Pain coursed through my body in a manner that had me squealing for my mother, but no sound leaked from mouth. The wires held my jaw shut, which I presumed had shattered. I laid on the hospital bed for days, alone and agonizing in excruciating pain and terror. Now and then, a woman would appear, holding a needle larger than my forearm. I would scream, but no words would come. I would pull myself away, but no effort could make me move. Despite my struggle, she would succeed—driving that needle deep into my thigh.

For three days I was alone, and terror clouded my mind. A terror so profound that it banished from me the innocence so carefully nurtured by my parents. You see, there are those who would think that my discovery of my parents’ hatred came about at the prodding of outside influence. That maybe the college had brainwashed me to hate them. No, on the contrary. What brought me to the truth of their loathing was their lack of care in my most dire of circumstances. They lived their lives raising a child who not once gave them a challenge. My parents lived in as much of a bubble as I. And as soon as a difficult circumstance arose, their truth spilled forth.

On the third day of my suffering, my mother arrived. I admit relief came to me as she walked through the door. I had no will or ability to express any such relief, but I know I felt it. The resentment I built up over the three days withered away at the sight of one I thought I loved. She came to me and gently touched my arm, tears in her eyes. Then she left. After an eternity of wakeful rest and painful awareness, my father appeared at my side, but as I turned to greet him, he had gone.

In a haze of time and horror, I found myself resting in my bedroom in my parents’ home. I do not remember when they had extricated me from the hospital, but they had done so and without my consent—at least I assume since I was in no condition to provide consent to any such dangerous maneuver that might have killed me. In the weeks that followed, I slowly regained conscious thought and saw how my burden exhausted my parents. Not only did the façade of their nurturing natures fall, but even the mask of love gave way to hatred. I had laid on my bed, unable to carry myself to the bathroom for relief. My hand tugged the tiny chain hooked to the bell that would summon my father. In the first days of my life back home, my father came without a moment’s hesitation, but as the weeks passed, his diligence in caring for my most basic needs grew into resentment. He waited with deliberate frustration so that I might wallow in misery for a few moments longer. This time he waited ten minutes to come, and by the time he approached my bed, I had soiled it. He stared at me in utter disbelief. His hand came to his face, and he sighed in an exhausted fashion. When his hand dropped, I saw the hatred in his eyes. I saw the sickness. The difficulty of caring for a child that no longer could care for herself finally revealed the truth in his feelings for me.

I could only assume my mother felt the same. She would go days without even walking past the room they had given to me. Perhaps it was the smell, perhaps it was her inability to hide the sheer malevolence she felt for me. I do not blame them, necessarily. I ruined their lives. They had worked for twenty-two years to rid their home of the invasive parasites of children. My brother had married young and lived with his pregnant wife not four doors down from my parents’ home. He had visited me once and his wife not at all. My entire family abandoned me in my most precious time of need. I had already felt alone and forgotten in the short months of my excursion into college life. Now, back home and in the supposedly loving arms of my family, I felt far lonelier and more forgotten.

My father turned me over—I offered what help I could, but my body had weakened considerably from my injuries and healing—and he gagged. He could hardly look at the mess his own indignation had caused without vomiting. He let me drop to the bed, and I groaned in pain.

“I’m sorry, dear,” my father said and then he flew from the room, slamming the door closed. I waited in my filth and discomfort for hours before a stranger entered my room. She wore full quarantine gear. Her mask covered her mouth and nose, goggles covered her eyes, and gloves reach up to her elbows where a white jumpsuit covered her clothes. With clinical precision, and a gentle touch, she caressed my wounded and failing body with more care and love than any member of my family had for at least a month.

2

From then on, none of my family came to see me. I lay in the still darkness of my room, waited on hand and foot by one of three different nurses. Each of them took turns ensuring my room stayed clean, my body stayed comfortable, and refusing to let me rot. On occasion, a lucidity would come to me, and I could hear shouts and laughter coming from the lower floor of the house. My brother’s piercing voice carried above the rest. They had gathered together, as a family, so that they might enjoy their lives without me. I wondered what sorts of parties and fantastic times they had planned when I had merely gone away to college. If they now did not care to show such brazen disregard for me and my own circumstances, what sort of evil and malicious hatred did they feel for me as I lingered among them, refusing to give any of them a moment’s peace from my existence?

At the time, I felt none of this. I only felt lonely and afraid. I thought of myself as a burden and of my role in the suffering of my parents. They cared for me; in the way I knew them capable of. They still love me, I told myself again and again. I will regain my health for their sake, I thought. And my health regained. Two months of immobility had rendered my muscles atrophied to nothing. I could stand with the help of another to lean on. I could walk so long as two others lifted me from the waist. Doctors came and went, telling me to accept my circumstances. To accept that perhaps I had come as far as I would. But in my mind, that was not acceptable. I could not let my burden cause misery to my family any longer. And so I pushed forward to prove them wrong. And I did.

My recovery only came on as I sought rigorous physical therapy and, through the motivation given to me by Kenzie. She messaged me one day, with no warning or regard for my privacy. I still cannot say how or why Kenzie came in contact with me, just that she did. I lay on my bed, turned over and staring at the pulsating pixels on my computer monitor, information gushing into my mind as I scrolled through the tiresome void. In that moment, the tiny red notification dot appeared over my messages, which was a strange occurrence for me. No one ever messaged me.

Hello, I’m Kenzie, it’s nice to meet you. Said the single line in this shapeless, formless, and faceless message.

At first I hesitated to even respond, the only reason someone might even think to message me was to make light of my circumstance. Not a single person had before spoken to me since my accident without that look in their eye, the look that said to me, “How long am I obligated to talk with her?” Still, I yearned for any sort of human connection, despite the high likelihood that Kenzie was a bot.

Hi, Kenzie. What do you want? I sent back, hoping to get to the point of the conversation and not waste any of my time waiting for her to be just like everyone else. All the while I stared at the three blinking dots next to Kenzie’s name, anguishing over the disparaging message she crafted.

We went to school together; you were in one of my classes. I heard about the accident. Are you okay? Kenzie messaged.

I could not tell if she was genuine or if someone had put her up to it before my accident I would have ignored her. I had enough connections through school and at home that I had no need for more, but after my injuries those had all vanished. Better than I was yesterday. I’ve had to relearn how to walk.

That sounds awful. I don’t remember when I learned how to walk, must hurt to fall over all the time. Kenzie acted like we already knew each other. I had no memory of this girl’s face much less her name.

It does, even worse when someone else has to pick me back up. My family got tired of it, so they had to get a house nurse. I had only been home a few weeks when they gave up on me. And my message kept going. I unloaded everything onto Kenzie. All the thoughts and fears that built up over the time I watched my family reject me. She validated them all and saw my family for what they were, heartless and full of hate.

Wow, your family is terrible. I’m home from school and I just live in the next town over, can I come over and see you? I had never told Kenzie what town I lived in, but I also did not care that she knew. Someone wanted to see me, in person, and talk to me, face-to-face.

You can come any time! I messaged back and sent her my address as well. In no less than twenty minutes Kenzie arrived at my bedroom door and for the next six hours we talked as if we had been best friends from childhood. She voiced to me the thoughts I kept locked deep beneath the surface. Because of her, I had the strength to overcome the world.

Four months of physical therapy brought back a portion of my original strength. I could walk on my own, I could carry myself upstairs, and most importantly I no longer needed another to perform the most basic of human tasks. The burden on my parents was lifted and I thought surely they would welcome me back with their loving arms. Instead, I was met with cool indifference.

“So, are you thinking about starting classes again soon?” my father asked, his eyes hopeful that I might finally leave him alone.

“I don’t know. It’s still pretty hard for me to move around. I don’t think I can live on my own,” I said. We sat at the table, my mother serving dinner, roast chicken and steamed veggies, my favorite dinner at the time.

“Leave her alone. She’s been through enough. Take all the time you need to recover. You don’t need to think about taking classes right now.” The look my mother gave to my dad revealed what she truly wished to say. Shut up about this right now, I’ll get her to leave soon.

“I’m not trying to pressure her or anything, just asking a question. Of course you’re welcome to stay while you need us,” my father said.

Those words should have given me the clues I needed to understand what my father wanted. “Welcome to stay while you need us,” or what he meant, “You won’t need us for much longer, and then you will leave.”

I smiled at my father and said, “I know you mean well, dad. Thank you.” And I then I ate my dinner, thanked my parents for the wonderful meal and retreated to my bedroom. In my room I had setup my desk to accommodate a few monitors and left my laptop plugged into them. I had, in fact, started classes online at the start of the spring semester. However, I felt reluctant to tell my parents this. While I still believed my parents loved me, I started to notice the signs of their hatred. I looked back at their care for me while I was indisposed, and I analyzed the words they said to me. My father wanted me out of his house, and I wanted to bring relief to the pain I caused him.

A ding rang from my laptop, and I saw a message flash across the screen. Kenzie was online again.

Hey, you doing okay still? Kenzie asked.

I sat down at my desk and opened the messaging app on my laptop. Kenzie had messaged me five times while I ate dinner.

We still hanging out tonight?

Hello?

What happened to you? We were supposed to talk.

Did you fall asleep again?

Hey, you doing okay still?

I read them all and sighed, Yeah, I’m fine. I had to eat dinner with my parents. My dad asked me that question again.

Again? Man, that’s the second time this week. He needs to get off your back. Did you tell him you’re already taking classes?

No, not yet. I don’t want to get his hopes up. What if I can’t do it?

Oh shut up, you’ll be fine.

Okay, sure.

Can I come over still?

Go ahead. The message was tagged with read and I closed my laptop. Sitting at my desk for too long made my back ache. I moved to my bed and as soon as my head hit the pillow, Kenzie burst through my door.

“How do you get here so fast?” I asked.

“I’m always already on my way, you know that,” Kenzie said, standing in my doorway. Her straight blonde hair bounced on her scrawny shoulders.

“What did you want?” I tried to sit up, but the day’s events had exhausted me, while I had enough strength to move about the house, too much still rendered me useless.

“You said we could hang out today, did you change your mind?” Kenzie sat on the foot of my bed.

“I didn’t want to change it, but my body had other plans,” I said staring at the ceiling. I did feel bad about falling through on my plans with Kenzie, but I could not refuse my parents offer for dinner. Kenzie had cared for me more than my family had during my weakest moments, not physically, but through conversation. We messaged each other often after our first meeting. We had met while I was in the throes of delusion, and I accepted her invitation to talk in in an attempt to find any sort of human connection outside of my parents. They did come to check on me occasionally, but I felt my physical burden had harmed them enough. Kenzie always responded to me and as soon as I could get out of bed on my own, she began to show up just when I needed her.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just leave it and go someplace else?” Kenzie said, her head always went there. To the metaverse.

“This again?” I said.

“Yeah, this again. It’s just not fair. You’ve done nothing wrong and are a wonderfully decent person, yet here you are lying in bed hardly able to move because some guy ran you down in his car. You deserve to live free from punishment for that man’s mistakes,” Kenzie laid next to me. Her hair fell on my face, and I tried to blow it off. She raised her hand and pushed it back, my own arms too weak at the moment to adjust her hair myself.

“There’s nothing to do about it, Kenzie. It’s not my fault or his. It just happened. It’s fine,” I said. I wanted to believe that, but Kenzie’s words had rung too true. It was not fair that such horrific punishment had befallen me. I knew that, but I could not yet admit it. The world had subjugated me for twenty-two years and up until that point I had no reason to question its authority over me. Who was I to say no and attempt to defy its power? Yet, I had done that. Your reality told me that I would have to be content as a vegetable, but I still walked each day. I defied all sense when I empowered myself to bring strength back into my limbs and clawed back my own self-sufficiency, insomuch that I could provide it.

“It is his fault and he’s running free after it. He didn’t stop when you were in the crosswalk, he didn’t even slow down. And now you lay here helpless. Then, as if the accident wasn’t enough, your parents had the audacity to take three days to see you. Three days!” Kenzie said. She always brought this up.

“I told you Kenzie, it wasn’t their fault. Flights got delayed and they couldn’t get to me,” I said, attempting to excuse my parents’ failings as I had for my entire life.

“They could’ve drove, they could’ve rented a car, they could’ve done a hundred other things, but they didn’t. Don’t make excuses for them. You told me how they acted when you couldn’t walk. Your own mother lived in the same house as you and you would go days without seeing her. Stuck in bed, with nothing to do, and your own mom can’t scrape up the courage to talk with you for five minutes a day.” Kenzie waved her arms in frustration.

“I don’t get why you’re so frustrated about this. They aren’t your parents,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter, they shouldn’t be allowed to treat you this way. And they say they love you. Ridiculous.”

“Hey! That’s not fair. They do love me. They say it all the time,” I turned my head away from Kenzie, her words hurt. The truth hurt. I had suspected it but did not want to believe it. I know now that Kenzie is right, but then, lying on that bed, I refused to accept it. How naïve I was.

“Keep telling yourself that. Just like you keep telling yourself you’re just fine living here, like this,” Kenzie gestured to all of me.

“Ouch,” I said.

“You know I don’t mean to belittle you, but what kind of life can you live bedbound and unable to walk around for more than a couple minutes at a time?” Kenzie propped herself up on an elbow to try and meet my eyes. I kept them away from her.

“My life,” I said.

“It’s not your life. Your life is what you choose it to be. You didn’t choose this.”

Again, she was right. I did not choose to be broken by a stranger in a car. I did not choose to have my life stolen from me by a nanosecond in time. I only had two choices. Consign myself to the reality that was chosen for me or fight it with every fiber of my being. Kenzie helped me to realize that.

Kenzie sighed and said, “There should be a place for us to go, to get away from all this.” Kenzie gestured all around her.

“You mean the metaverse?” I said.

“Exactly! Where no one, not even God, can tell you what you can or can’t be. Where you get to decide all the rules. It’s only fair.”

The idea always intrigued me, from the first moment I read about it the days before my accident. A place where nothing could get in the way of the truest expression of myself.

“How would that even work?” I asked.

“They’ve already started working on it. It’s built off the system they use for the brain chips. It’s supposed to use your brain as the computer, so the processing power is going to be far more superior then anything we’ve seen. Anything would be possible because you’re in charge of what’s being given to you, or so they say. In a world like that, if anyone wanted to come to you, they’d have to accept the rules that you set.”

Immediately my mind jumped to much the same place most everyone’s—well, everyone who is ignorant—did when they thought about the implications of a metaverse. “And what happens to me? I just lay here, withering away?”

“How is that any different than you are now?” Kenzie sat up and moved between me and the edge of the bed.

“I can talk to real people now. What if no one wants to follow my rules?” I asked.

“They’ll have to. The way they’re building this thing, it takes something like a backup of your brain and then it can project that backup to anyone else in the metaverse. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, someone can always get to you when they need. And if you wish, the metaverse could give you the memories of the time your projection spent with another person. In this metaverse, you would never have to feel like no one loved you ever again. The metaverse could bring you anyone, whenever you wanted. And they would love you just as much as you wanted them to. You could make them spend time with you.”

Even in my naïveté I had to admit that sounded nice, only I could not understand how I could bring myself to force anyone to do something they did not want to do. “And if they don’t want to love me?”

“Doesn’t matter. They aren’t the ones doing it. Using the backup, the metaverse creates an analogue of anyone’s mind. We already do that. Remember those AI chat bots? They easily mimic people based off social media posts. With access to your deepest thoughts and memories, the metaverse would have no problem recreating a perfect mimic of whoever you wanted,” Kenzie let herself drop from the bed to the floor and turned to face me, I did not turn away.

“I don’t know about that, it just feels wrong,” I said, misunderstanding the beauty that Kenzie described. In such a place I could create whatever world I wished, and I would be the arbiter of it all. Nothing could touch me. No cars, no hatred, and certainly not my parents and their indignation. In the metaverse I could have loving, kind, agreeable parents that did everything to afford me a comfortable and acceptable life. They would not gag at my excrement. They would not ignore me for days and weeks. My parents, my brother even, would accept me as I saw fit and would do everything I needed them to do. As themselves.

“It’s not wrong,” Kenzie said. “You aren’t hurting anyone, or forcing anyone to do something they don’t want to do. If you wanted to have real people to interact with, the metaverse would let that happen. I’m certain.”

“What if they aren’t in the metaverse and you want to talk with them?” I asked.

“Well, I’m sure the metaverse will find a way. Maybe it could use the brain chips everyone is getting these days and create an analogue from those. It’ll be the same technology. Why wouldn’t it be able to extract all the thoughts and memories needed to create the analogue of the citizens the metaverse requires?”

I thought about that for a moment and let the ideas sink in. In such a place I could have recovered from injuries without having to endure the horror of being bedridden. I would not have laid helpless and afraid. Instead I could have climbed the highest mountains, dove into the depths of the sea, explored across galaxies in time and space. Yet, none of that was available to me because of my unfortunate circumstance of being born too early in our human history. The idea intrigued me far more after Kenzie proposed what the metaverse could be, far more than it ever had even when the concept became familiar to me. Perhaps then it was that the metaverse was merely a thought experiment, something that could not yet come to pass. It was merely fantasy. Kenzie executed that dark notion of mine with a few simple words and just then the metaverse became real.

“Do you think it’ll really be like that?” I asked.

“That’s what they say,” Kenzie said. “There will be no more reason to live in this world, for any of us.”

“Any of us?” I asked, curious to understand what she meant.

“No one will have to live here in anymore when the entire project is completed. We can all plug into the metaverse and all of humanity will live in absolute comfort and satisfaction.”

“Wouldn’t we just go extinct? And how would our bodies be taken care of?” I forced myself to sit up, invigorated by the conversation. It hurt to prop myself up on my elbows, but the pain was worth the satisfaction of having overcome yet another obstacle your reality thrust upon me.

“Not everyone will want to be in the metaverse. They’ll have the same questions that you have now, but they won’t understand like you do. These people will fight it, they’ll attack it. And no matter how much power the metaverse has it will never be able to coopt everyone. Those people will keep us alive. Now, I’m talking hypothetically, of course, as the company doing all this has only shown limited demonstrations of the technology. But I imagine that this will all be the case. Considering how entrenched into ideas of the past so many people are. The metaverse will take over the charge of caring for all of us within it. By doing so, the metaverse will ensure our safety and survival. By default all the best minds and the best creatives will live in the metaverse, that is only natural. So if any of the people on the outside wish to function, if they wish to partake of what we now know as modern life, they will submit to the jobs that the metaverse needs them to do. Not because they are forced to, but because they wish to have the means to provide for their families,” Kenzie sat back on the bed next to me, leaning against the headboard.

As Kenzie leaned back, I collapsed back down into the bed, no longer able to hold myself up and unable to bring myself to a full sitting position. Kenzie caught me before I smashed my head against the headboard and gently lowered me to the mattress.

“And when we’re there,” I said, exhaustion beginning to overcome me, “My parents will have to love me?” I proposed this is as a question, not certain that Kenzie told the truth. I wanted to believe her, I really did, but all evidence pointed to the contrary. It was not possible to defy reality so completely. Though, as my mind drifted to sleep, in the midst of the conversation that continued with Kenzie, I knew that idea to be false.

3

Through torment and agony I completed four years of college and earned myself a degree that proved to be almost useless for me. Even with the experience and credentials I suffered so long to get I could not find gainful employment that would allow me to ascend from my parents’ care and into my own. The Metaverse Project had made incredible strides in its attempts to coopt brain link technology and the first subjects had begun to enter into the metaverse. They only accepted one hundred applicants. I tried to get onto that list, but as far as I know you either had to bribe your way in or know some powerful people. And I neither had the funds to bribe nor connections to powerful people. So, in order to ensure I would be among the ranks of the next early adopters I needed to secure employment—and at the same time convince my parents to allow me to stay with them while I worked. Both of these goals proved far more difficult than necessary. I had already wasted four years of my life performing useless scholarly tasks just so I could get a piece of paper that wasted even more of my time to fill out.

Still, I needed that paper to get a job, or so I had been told. Throughout my time obtaining said paper, I had come across many people who had obtained lucrative and satisfying jobs without the need to spend money nor time for a degree. All I could think of was the conversations I would have with Kenzie on how useless all that would be in the metaverse. Once there I would no longer need to study. Anything I wanted to know would be uploaded into my mind as soon as I decided to know it. There would be no learning, no time or money wasted. The entirety of human knowledge would be mine to know. I only needed the resources to guarantee I would be a part of this evolution of the human spirit and mind.

“Any job interviews today?” My father asked as I strode from the hallway and into the kitchen.

“Just one,” I said. I actually had several, but my father had no business knowing exactly what I was up to. He had been far too excited to learn of my return to school several years earlier. Ever since then he had been trying to shove me out of the door, with no care as to whether or not I would survive.

“I’m sure you’ll get it,” he said.

“Thanks, dad,” I said and grabbed an orange from the bowl on the table. I turned to leave, but my father spoke up.

“Do you have a moment?”

“Sure, what is it?” I turned back around to meet his eyes. Those hateful, evil eyes. They looked joyful then, and that could only mean my father had finally come to a decision that would hurt me.

“Your mother and I have been talking, you’ve been staying with us for some time, and since she can no longer work. We were thinking once you get a job, you might be able to pay us rent each month. It would really help us out,” my father proposed his inane plan as if he did me a favor. Once, I had seen him as a benevolent caretaker and at that moment another piece of that façade fell away. His true intentions shown forth. He only wanted me so long as he could squeeze me for worth. The last four years had been a torture for him and my mother. In his mind, he thought he should be paid for having to deal with me. He had dealt with me for twenty-six years and he finally let his mask peel away just enough to let me know that he had had enough.

“I don’t know if I can even find a job. Especially considering I might not be able to keep it. You know how hard it still is for me to get around. I would need you or mom to help me get to work.”

“That’s fine, just let me know if it’s possible. It would really help out,” my father tried to cover his truth once again, and at the time it worked. Now, looking back from afar, I can see exactly what my father wanted. Then, however, I still wanted him to be the loving caring father I thought I grew up with. It still hurt to think of how he treated me while I was bedridden. Before my accident I had not even thought to question who my parents were, but as I stood there, being shaken down for money I did not have by the very people I expected to care for me, I could no longer ignore the truth. When my father fled from my broken and useless body after I had soiled myself, for the first time in my life I had the thought, I don’t think my dad wants me here. And immediately I pushed it away, in the same manner I had defended my parents from Kenzie whenever she attacked them. And in the moment after my father asked me to pay rent the same thought came to me, He doesn’t want me here.

“Okay,” was all I could say to him.

4

I had a car come pick me up from my house and take me to my first interview. The ride there I tried to forget what my father had done, to remember the man I thought he was as a child. None of that was possible anymore. I kept thinking of how he had run from me, how he had demanded I pay him rent. No longer could I see him or my mother as my loving parents, no they were something else entirely. My parents still, of course, but not loving. Perhaps not even kind. They had given up on showing me such affectations. And I could see plainly how they despised me, at least in part. I had not yet come to complete terms with their hatred, only in part.

As the car pulled up to the office a melancholic rage fell over me. I kept thinking over and over about my parents. Nothing I did could remove them from my mind. Even as I stepped into the office of the man interviewing me I could not shake the intrusive thoughts. Then one thought took hold as I sat down in the chair across from the man’s desk. In the metaverse, I could will these thoughts away and no one could force me to pay rent.

“It’s nice to meet you. Let’s get right into it, shall we?” the interviewer said, interrupting my precious thoughts of salvation. He paused, waiting for me to respond.

“Shall we?” he repeated, uncomfortable with the silence I gave to him.

“Huh? Oh, yes, yes. Let’s start,” I said.

“Very well,” the interviewer said as he jotted notes onto a pad in front of him. “Why do you think you would be a good fit for this job?”

My legs twitched in the chair. I wiped my palms dry on the arm rests, swallowed the lump in my throat, and answered. “Well, I’ve got the qualifications. I-I,” I swallowed again, “Sorry, I’m just a bit nervous.”

“No need to worry. Take your time,” the man said.

“Do you have any water?” I asked, looking around the office.

“No, we don’t. Sorry,” he answered and then gave me that look. It was the same look my father gave to me when I knew he wanted me gone. His eyes widened and darted back and forth between me and the door. He gripped his hands together and his lips tightened.

“That’s fine, I can continue without it,” I said, sensing the awkward tension building in the room. “I would be an incredible asset to your team. I’m hard working, punctual, and easy-going. I take advantage of opportunities and—” I coughed to relieve some of the pressure in my chest. Then I coughed again. And again. I had no control over the sudden fit and pressed a hand to my breast while reaching out to the man. I barely squeaked out, “Water.” As I fell to the floor.

I came back to consciousness with the man hovering over me and handing me a bottle of water. He smiled and knelt next to me.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

I smiled back and said, “So you did have water?” And my heart dropped. I did not mean to say something so rude and sarcastic. I tried to apologize, but in my frantic attempt to recover from my irregular behavior I swallowed the water too fast and began choking on it. The coughing fit resumed and in the next moment I lay on the couch in the waiting area as an EMT lifted me onto a stretcher. The interviewer stood off to the side, staring at me in disbelief. Then as I was carted off he turned away, that look ever present on his arrogant and unforgiving face. I missed all my other interviews that day, not having found a single place where I could make enough money to guarantee my access to the metaverse.

The hospital let me return home after only a few hours. I had hoped my parents would be there to pick me up, but they did not. Perhaps the hospital hadn’t notified them. I am an adult, I thought. They are my emergency contact though. They would’ve been notified. Why didn’t they come pick me up? The pattern became clear to me. My parents only cared when it was easy for them to care. As soon as I presented a difficulty, they held me at a ten-foot pole’s length.

As soon as I got home I called the office I had interviewed at. The phone rang several times before a woman picked up.

“Hello, how can I help you?” she asked.

“Hi, I interviewed earlier today, and I was wondering if I could speak to the hiring manager?” I said, lying on my bed with the phone to my ear.

“Oh sure, we did have several interviews today, who are you again?”

“I passed out during the interview.”

“Oh, yes, you,” she answered with an unnecessary emphasis on you.

What does she mean by you? I did nothing wrong. That stupid man wouldn’t give me water. It’s his fault! The thought burst into my mind as if breaking through a dam. The water rushed through and all the resentment I had held back for the last four and half years of my life came flooding through. Finally, after the torment my parents had put me through, I recognized the evil that they were. The evil that all people who saw me in the same way were. No longer did I feel bad because of what I said to the interviewer. He deserved it for refusing me water when I needed it.

“Hello, this is the hiring manager,” a man’s voice said on the other line.

“Hello, I’m the interviewee who passed out today. I wanted to thank you for getting me to the hospital,” I said.

“Oh, we didn’t do that. The paramedics came to get you,” he said.

“It’s all the same, you called them. Thank you. I have a question for you?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I wanted to know if we could reschedule our interview. I’d still very much like to keep my name in the running,” I asked.

“Well, I’m sorry, but we filled the position while you were out.”

“Really?” I stewed over that for a moment, wondering what possible reason this man had for rejecting me. “Was it because I passed out?”

“I’m really not at liberty to say.” The man deflected my question out of embarrassment for his responsibility in my misfortune.

“I’m sure you aren’t, but could you say what it was about the other candidate you liked more than me?” A part of me genuinely wanted to know, but more so a vindictiveness in my mind wanted him to suffer.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t.” He hung up after his last words. I let the phone drop from my hand onto my bed. He felt it. I knew he did. He felt the overwhelming guilt of what he had done. I had made him feel that. For the first time in my life I recognized a power I could wield over other people. Everyone had a desire to maintain the same façade of love and kindness my parents used my entire life. They wished to believe they could fit into a hateful and disingenuous reality. They all tried to follow the rules set for them by some power that gave them no choice. The words Kenzie had spoken to me for four years drew to the surface of my thoughts.

“Everyone does it. We all wish that we could control this world, but no one really can. That’s why when the metaverse is fully realized, most everyone will retreat to it. And those who don’t will cling to the hope that they can change their minds. They’ll desperately try to keep us all ‘living’ by their standard of what is living and because of this the metaverse will live,” Kenzie said to me. She sat at my desk; the chair turned toward me as I sat on the floor leaning against my bed.

“Why would they even try to keep us all alive? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let the metaverse rot?” I asked.

“Because these people are so desperate for the world to believe that they are good and kind. They will do anything to prove it, not only to the people around them, but to themselves. But we in the metaverse know what really drives them. They will seek to control us. They will seek to impose upon us their ideas and refuse to let any others live beside it.” Kenzie spun the chair back and forth while she spoke.

“I think some will try shut it down. They might think us already dead if we’re in the metaverse,” I said.

“Then the metaverse will deal with them.”

“How would it do that?”

“Because even more so than there are people who are willing to do anything to hide their true hateful nature, there are those that will do anything for profit. These people will willingly live outside of the metaverse to protect it. And the metaverse will provide it. The company in charge of the Metaverse Project already does this. They’ve hired guards for everything involved with it.”

“I don’t like to think that people will have to die because of this. I don’t understand why it’s so important to these people to hide their malevolence. If they lived in the metaverse they’d be able to indulge in their hatred without harming a single person. To deny that nature seems worse than hiding it and lying to everyone you meet,” I said.

“It’s fine that they do. It makes them easy to control. All you need to do is threaten to reveal that mask and you can mold them like clay in your hands.”

“I don’t think I could do that. It feels wrong to manipulate people like that.”

“Perhaps not now, but you will. All it will take is for you to see that mask fall. Then you will see it everywhere. Any hesitation you feel right now will pass away. Just give it time.”

Time and experience are what it took. The experience of having my desires torn from me because of the ill will of a single man and the time to get myself in a position to see it. He stared me in the face as I was dying and could only look at me with disgust. And as soon as I had left his office he forgot about me. Any consideration he had for me vanished because I had been an inconvenience to him. I had to tell Kenzie; she would be proud of my achievement.

Hey! You were right. I saw it. This guy just let it fall and I saw it.

I waited for a few minutes, but no response came back to me. The message sat at sent with no indication that Kenzie had read it. She’s probably just offline, I thought. I went back to my bed and laid down, wondering what I could do to control other people with my newfound insights. Days went by and Kenzie had not responded, she did not even read the message. Her responses on forum posts went silent. Everyone I asked said they had not heard from her. As much as I wanted to worry, as much as she had been a great friend, I could not blame her for leaving. I had been an undue burden on many of the people I met and to her most of all. She likely just moved on to the next person she could help to see the light of what reality truly was, having succeeded in showing me the truth.

5

It took me another year to find a job and not two paychecks in my parents forced me out of their home. The Metaverse Project moved forward with blinding speed. They added three more beta groups to the program, each larger than the last. The fifth group was scheduled to be chosen in only a few months, with ten-thousand applicants being selected. I had failed the first four rounds and had lost hope in getting in for the fifth. Besides, any money I had to pay for the spot had slipped away in my need to pay for necessities and rent. I was lucky to come home to a bank account with more than a couple hundred dollars in it each month. And what I tried to save often disappeared into a void of expenses that continuously piled on top of me from moment to moment. Each day I endured in a slave-like existence where I had no choice but to continue to work to survive. At the time, I felt it necessary seeing as I could work, and my parents would have nothing to do with me if I lived with them.

Again, as I departed from their home the façade of care and love returned. They often invited me over for dinner, my father never asked after my stability. He and my mother laughed and spoke to me overjoyed about their excursions in a life of childlessness. Each month their adventures grew more and more grandiose. It seemed the took every moment to show me how great their lives had become because I no longer lived with them. And they cared nothing for my plight as a slave to the company I worked for.

I worked as a human resourced representative for a large company only a short walk from my apartment. My primary job was to vet potential candidates and then approve them for the interview process. Occasionally I would call the candidates in for a preliminary interview to assess whether they were a satisfactory fit for the company culture. Because of this I had direct power over determining the company culture through the candidates I passed on to the management team. No one could work for this company without my approval, and I had grown very accustomed to the power that afforded me. The control fit exactly the sort of circumstances that I needed to hone my insights to the false facades that people wore. I dug through that mask to determine their true intentions. If I found them lacking, I would toss them into the trash pile, never to be seen again. Even the slightest misstep on social media—not because of whatever passe public morals determined what was acceptable that week, though that often proved a useful excuse to deny an applicant, but by whether or not the applicant annoyed me in their online banter—would disqualify the candidate. Without a real metaverse to satisfy me I created my own, so far as your reality would let me.

This man I brought had a real chance to make to the actual interview process. He barely had a social media presence, his credentials fit the job, and when I spoke to him he seemed to be genuine.

“Do I sit here?” He asked pointing to only chair in the room. We did not meet in my office. I had no office. Instead we met in a meeting booth. It was a tiny room barely big enough for three people with only two chairs in it.

“Yes,” I said. His demeanor already beginning to fail what his voice over the phone had revealed. He stood stooped, his shoulders dropped low and his head looking down. I usually ignored such a lack of confidence, as those who lacked the physical presence of a more confident person usually had a harder time masking their true intentions, but the man had asked if he was supposed to sit in the only other chair available. That bothered me.

“Thank you,” he said while sitting in the chair, spending far more time than necessary to adjust it.

“Let’s start then,” I said.

“Okay,” the man looked up to me and met my eyes. He had droopy, sad eyes. I liked that about him.

“Why did you ask to sit in the only chair in the room?” I asked. His ridiculous question caught in my mind, and I found myself unable to move past it. Certainly the company did not need a man who would ask such a pointless question, one who could no more think for himself than an AI waiting for a command to show off its abilities.

“I didn’t know if I was supposed to sit or not,” the man said.

“There are two chairs in the room and I’m sitting in one of them. You couldn’t infer that you were supposed to sit based on that?”

“I didn’t think about that.” He shuffled around in the chair.

“What were you thinking about?” I asked.

“I don’t know, about what I would say in this interview, I guess.”

“And while thinking about that you didn’t just sit in the only other available chair?”

“No,” he looked around the room, avoiding all eye contact with me. I saw this movement and smirked. Time and time again I saw this exact same movement as the interviewee before me squirmed in discomfort, that is when their mask fell.

“What sort of question did you think I would ask you when you finally built up the courage to sit down?” I said. He tried to lock eyes with me, but after only a second of eye contact he looked down toward my chest. “My eyes are up here, sir.”

“I wasn’t looking—”

“No, you were. I know you were.”

He looked down at the floor and said, “Sorry.”

“What did you think I would ask?”

His gaze focused on a spot just above my head, he feigned eye contact, but at the same time strained himself to not look at my breasts. He said, “I thought you might ask why I wanted this job.”

“I know why you want it. So you can make money.” I just wanted the man to be honest with me, that’s all I wanted from everyone. Even my parents. I would respect them and actually enjoy their company if only they could honestly say to me how they felt. Yet another reason why the metaverse would be so great. Nothing I hear would be a lie because it’s all the reality that I make. No one can impose on it what they want me to believe. Everything in it is real and true because that’s how I want it to be, I thought. A recurring theme in my thoughts since Kenzie had gone from my life. Her wisdom had been replaced by my own, though I knew these thoughts all stemmed from the truths that Kenzie had revealed to me. One that let me drop all the pretenses I held. I had a mask as well, one that wanted people to love me, one that desired more than anything to hide the weakness that lurked beneath it. Only when Kenzie got me to drop that mask, with the help of the man that had failed to interview me, did I realize how my parents lies had misdirected me. They raised me to care about what others thought. They raised me to feed off the love they pretended to give me. And I reveled in it. I devoured every bit of false affection I could find. Even those from strangers. I sought it from the interviewer who scorned me and because of that I let my need for water pass by. That almost killed me. No longer would I let such inane useless desires and needs control my life. Instead, I would use them to control the reality that had allowed me to fall into such horror and pain. A goal I had to pursue because the metaverse increasingly fell out of my reach.

“Well, yes, that is what I want, but that’s not the only reason.” The man stumbled over his words.

“You have another reason you wish to slave away in this place for nothing more than a pittance that will let you live just a day longer?”

“Well, yes, I l-like doing the work,” he said.

“Would you do the work without being paid?”

He looked at me and cocked his head with a slight turn. “No?”

“Then the only reason you want the job is to be paid. Stop lying to me, sir.”

“I’m no—”

“That’ll be all. If you can’t be honest about your intentions, then you are not a good fit for our company. Thank you,” I held my hand out to the door.

“Excuse me?” the man said.

“That’s all I need for you. This interview is over.”

“You didn’t even interview me.” The man’s sad eyes clouded over with anger.

“I did. I know everything about you that I need to know. Now please, leave before I need to call security. Thank you,” I stood up now. The man looked to me and then to the door, his mouth held open in disbelief. At this point in the denial I had to only hope the man would take it farther. He might rage at me with uncontrollable anger. And then, through the resulting conviction and lawsuit, I would own everything that man had to offer me. His life would be mine to deal with as I saw fit, and that absolute control would afford me the strength I needed to continue living in the reality that denied me the life I had wanted to live. However, the man did nothing. They always just looked at me, with the same disgusted look my father had given me since the day he fled from my need of him. That look drove me. It let me know that their mask had fallen. It meant I finally brought them to honesty, and they would be better for it.

And so it was that I came to be how I am, ever insistent on lording my reality over others to ensure that all others would fall to the side and mine would remain triumphant. From then on the sheer joy and absolute pleasure I derived from spiting another would fuel my ambition to reach to the metaverse. I had become contempt for all things that would hold down those who your reality would repress.

PART II

1

The morning broke on a clear spring day, it rained the night before and the air smelt clean, fresh, and only slightly of urine and smog. I hated that about the world, the smells—well not just the smells, but certainly that was chief among reasons. Not once do I remember walking around and not having my senses assaulted by something unpleasant, whether it be temperature, air, humidity, smells, or ugliness, all of it disgusted me. This is the world we must live in? How horrible it is. How long must I suffer it without the metaverse? I would think such thoughts and ponder them intransigently. It did not matter where I went, it was always the same. Three years had passed since I started my new job, and still the metaverse kept its distance from me, so I was forced to live and attempt to make my way in your oppressive reality, but that did not stop me from denying it and punishing others for denying mine.

I stood at the end of a walkway on the edge of the parking lot when I spotted him, the man who so scorned me each day of my life. He lorded over me with his oppressive masculinity and denial of my femininity. I blew into my handkerchief to clear the smell of urine from my nostrils. As I did so, I watched the man look at me, acknowledge my presence and then in the next breath, completely ignore my existence, something that did not happen for the other women in the office. I did not know his name, nor what department he worked for, just that he scorned me and that I would have his head for it.

“Morning,” I muttered just loud enough that he might hear, but not loud enough that he could understand. If he truly cared to recognize me then he would ask me to clarify. He kept walking along the concrete pathway up to the two glass doors that opened into the reception hall of our shared office building, not even turning his head to look at me. It was an ugly building shaped like a box, painted beige. I could not imagine working in a building with less personality than that, but work I did because at that point in time I had not yet discovered the futility of it. I slaved each day for that company so that I might have what the metaverse would freely give, what I was owed for being forced to live in your godforsaken reality.

“Morning,” I said as the door shut behind him and the woman he held it for. He ignored me. I was sure my second call had been loud enough that he would hear the faint words scratching in his ears, but still he denied me. I could not let such a heinous act of violence go unpunished. Every day he held the door open for every woman that walked behind him, except for me. The man deliberately let the door slam closed so that I would have to open it myself, offering me nothing of the same courtesy he did to other women. I had hardly said two different words to the man over the course of my employment there, yet he chose to hate me simply because I was not feminine enough to him. I vowed to punish this man severely for not recognizing my womanhood.

It was a simple plan, one that started out fairly inexpensive. It was a perfect plan, really. For weeks I had stayed up all night concocting the exact words to say, the specific outfits to wear, and the best way to style my hair. Every waking moment I spent thinking about how I would show this man and absolutely humiliate him in front of the entire office—or at least those that were present in the morning when we both arrived. He would recognize my existence and then I would expose him for his hypocrisy and misogyny. At the time I was perfectly capable of opening my own doors and I certainly did not need the help of a man to get through one. Even thinking about how grossly negligent that man was in his insistence that no woman—except for me—was to open her own door, as if they could not. So, I would make him open a door for me and then I would shame him for it, publicly.

I dreamed every night I could sleep—which was little since the excitement of the next morning when I would encounter the man again kept me awake most nights—about exactly how our interaction would happen. He would look at me, mouth agape as he admired my feminine beauty, and then hold open the door for me as I walked—as slow as I could manage—to the open door. As soon I walked through, I would turn and lay into him with the force of a tornado.

“How dare you? Do you think that women cannot open their own doors? Do you think that I am so weak that a small glass door could bar me from making my way into this building? I don’t need the help of a man to get through blocked passages, and certainly not help from a man like you,” I would say with such dignity, pride, and confidence that the man would run away in embarrassment, and I would continue about my day to uproarious applause.

But dreams are just that, dreams and they always remain so when outside the metaverse. I would like to say I performed exactly as I planned, that my dreams became reality, but I am not a liar. Well, I am not a liar when it matters. You must understand that this man was far craftier than I anticipated. It is as if he knew every point of my plans before I ever had the chance to execute them. He had to have spent his time devising his own methods to dissuade me from carrying out my masterful plans and I am remiss to say that it worked. For almost two months we played a game of cat and mouse. He would ignore me, and I would casually assert my feminine form more and more each day. Despite that, however, he would still ignore me. Even as I called after him, he still passed me by. Again, I did not call out so that he would understand but just so that he would barely hear. Anyone can get another’s attention simply by shouting. It takes a true woman to get the attention of a man simply by being. I wasn’t trying to prove that I could get his attention by being nothing more than a barking dog, but that I could do so with my charm and beauty.

At the conclusion of the second month, I made an important observation, all the woman who the man held the door open had extremely large breasts. They flaunted them, openly, as if to tell me I was not as womanly as them because my own were tiny—almost nonexistent. Of course, that is absurd, breast size does not make a woman, but these women obviously thought so and so did this man. It occurred to me that the only way I would achieve my goal to embarrass the man would be to have breasts as large, if not larger, than the women for which he held the door. There were plenty of ways to go about that, prosthetics I could wear on my chest to mimic the appearance of large breasts, or even something as simple as stuffing my bra so that they might appear larger. However, none of those were convincing enough. They had to be real. I needed to show them off as promiscuously as the rest of the women in order to tantalize the man into doing my bidding.

I immediately made an appointment with a doctor to find out how I could go about increasing my breast size in the most spectacular manner, in the meantime, my plan continued onward. When I first started planning to trick this man, my first attempts to appear far more feminine were paltry at best. I wore what I had always worn, a shirt and pants. All my life I’ve not cared much for fashion, I felt comfortable in most any bit of clothing except for feminine clothes, they just did not seem to fit right. Regardless, my first attempt I did nothing more than slightly alter how I stood, in order to best accentuate my body in a way that no true straight man could resist. Of course, he was no true straight man, he was a conniving devil that sought to undermine my femininity at every step. The next day I took to applying a small bit of foundation on my face, never before had I worn makeup, I just never saw the point in it, but this situation was dire, and I would stop at nothing to humiliate this man. Each day I applied more makeup, in different places and in different colors. I spent countless hours perfecting my makeup application skills so thoroughly I could change a man to a horse with nothing but a brush and some color. Yet, despite my mastering of a classical feminine art, the man disregarded me.

By then the two months had past and I realized two things, first was that breast size mattered to him—as I noted—and second clothing did as well. So, while I waited for my appointment, I modified my wardrobe. At the time my meager salary could not necessarily cover the expenses I had amassed while in my schemes, the makeup alone took a substantial investment. It then became necessary to seek debt—in order to keep my metaverse funds intact. While I had been frugal in my means to that point, avoiding debt at all costs, no barrier proved too steep to cross when it came to proving my point to this man. I first sought money from my parents, which they provided willingly as my father had come into a hefty inheritance in the recent years. Then, I spent every last penny they gave to me on clothing, accessories, and anything else I could use to convince this man I was worth holding the door for.

He walked by me for another two weeks, still not noticing me. He knew, I cannot explain it in any other way. The man knew exactly what I planned and had determined to avoid falling into my trap. I wondered how many more hours he spent evading my subterfuge than I spent planning it. The thought gave me pause to laugh, what a petty and obsessive man he must be to go through so much trouble just to avoid opening a door. Still, it would be in vain, because I would win, it was my reality and I do not lose in my reality.

The price of the breast surgery only three months prior would have had my mouth drop and my blood rushing with anger, but I became a different woman when I took on the task to humiliate that man. I could not afford it. However, a bank could. Despite not having incurred debt before in my life, I had a perfect credit score. For the evil my parents surely are, they did teach me financial literacy and in that moment, as the bank checked for my financial reliability, I thanked them for the small amount of good they did. I walked out of the bank with the highest limit credit card they would give me and scheduled my surgery.

It did not occur to me that I would need to wait on the day of my surgery but wait I did. I sat in the waiting room in a plastic surgeon’s office for uncountable minutes waiting for a nurse to call me into the back room. During this time, I attempted to avoid all contact with the three other people in the room, lest they would inquire of my purpose in this office. It is not that I was ashamed of my purpose, it was just that I did not have the energy to explain it to people who would not likely understand. Already I had to explain in great detail to the surgeon during my initial consult. However, he did not seem to care all too much about my purpose in getting this surgery, but more so about my ability to pay for said surgery. As soon as I mentioned I had already made payment in full he smiled, signed a form, and then exited the room.

“What could you possibly be here for?” the intrusive voice of a nosy man interrupted my remembrance. I pulled myself back to the present and stared toward the sound. A scrawny man sat next to me, his curly blonde hair bouncing on his head as he spoke.

“Not your business,” I said and turned to a magazine I picked up for the purpose of ignoring him.

“It may not be, but still. I’m curious. What could a woman like you possibly want to change?”

“What could a man like you be doing in a place like this trying to pick up women who are imminently leaving?”

“I don’t usually ask any women anything, but I had to ask you. So, what is it?”

“Who are you?”

“Lane. I’m curious is all. Were you injured?”

This joyous antithesis to spite frustrated me almost more than the doorman. I considered cancelling my surgery all together simply to change course and target this irritating man that so happily asked me such personal questions. He smiled at me in the most obnoxious manner, as if he had anything to be happy about. I had no choice but to crush him. He came to me with the sole purpose of trying to upset me and I could not let him.

“Tell me, Lane, why do you feel the need to intrude on me today?”

“I told you, I’m just curious. I’ve been watching you for a while, I’m ashamed to admit. I’ve only now got the courage to talk to you.”

“So, you’ve been stalking me?”

“I wouldn’t say stalking, more like keeping an eye on you.”

“Why would you do that?”

“You’re interesting, I think. I don’t know many people that would go to such great lengths to punish someone for ignoring you.”

I turned back to Lane from my magazine and said, “What makes you say that?” Either Lane knew far more about me than he let on, or he only guessed at my purposes. Either way, I did not like that he figured something out without my telling him.

“A lucky guess, I suppose.”

“What right do you have to come into my space and start accusing me of such things?” I said.

“The same right that lets you sit there waiting for the doctor. Why are you waiting for him again?”

“That is my business, sir, not yours.”

“Please, humor me. I’d like to understand what it is that brought you here, call it scholarly curiosity.”

I longed to slap the man and let the matter dissolve into physical madness. He seemed to exude positivity from every pore of his body, but no man who can so absolutely ignore the misery of life could hold himself together under the duress of physical assault. Ultimately, I decided against it. He posed no physical threat, and I had no desires to get trapped in allegations of assault.

“I’m getting a breast enhancement,” I said to Lane.

“Really? Why would you do that?” Lane asked, keeping his eyes focused on my own.

“Because they are small, inconsequential, and not nearly feminine enough.”

“Interesting,” is all Lane managed to say before standing and walking toward the exit. After a few steps he turned to me and said, “Look, I know you aren’t ready to hear this, but you don’t have to do this. You’re enough as you are.”

“What the hell makes you think it’s okay to talk to me like that?” I almost screamed at him, but as I started speaking Lane had already gone, as suddenly as he had appeared. The nosy bastard did nothing to dissuade me from moving forward with the surgery. It needed to be done and no man could convince me of the contrary. The door man had scorned me for too long for my lack of feminine posture. I would prove to him his barbaric and crude philosophy of female worth. Then I would simultaneously rip it from him. He would learn what it was to lose everything one believed in and have no choice but to rebuild from scratch. That is the purpose of so drastically enhancing my breasts. It had to be done and there is nothing anyone could have done to stop it.

Finally, the nurse called me back into the depths of the office space and I could forget about Lane. She had me change into the hospital gown and then follow her down a hallway into an ever-decreasing temperature. By the time we reached the end of the hallway I was on the verge of developing frostbite in my extremities. And in a few short hours I awoke to a spectacular breast enlargement that made me more voluptuous than any other woman that I had ever seen. The surgery left me mildly scarred and slightly ill, but there was no cost too great to make that doorman suffer for denying my womanhood.

The week after, the allotted time for recovery, I showed up to work for the first time wearing a tight red turtleneck and khaki pants, the outfit I had that most accentuated my new body. I stood in the same spot as always, the end of the walkway just after the parking lot. I gave my morning greeting and this time the man looked at me, his mouth open and his eyes glued to my chest. He smiled, laughed even, and shook his head in astonishment at the sight of such glorious femininity. Then he continued down the walkway saying nothing to me. He held the door open for three different woman who waited for him at the entrance, scorning me in the process. I’d given everything to this ploy and still it did not work, but I was on the right path. Never had he looked at me with such amazement. I had made an impact, far more than any other day previous.

Over the course of the next week, I purchased a new dress or blouse each night to wear the next morning. Each one successively cut lower and lower down my neckline, revealing more and more of my chest so that it might provoke such a lustful response from the man he would beg to hold every door open for me for the rest of my life. Certainly—since his only priority in life seemed to be denying me the same respect he afforded to other women—he would see his sins and then seek any way that he might repent of them. The day after my turtleneck I wore a normal cut blouse, the man didn’t even look at me. Each day was the same, a slightly lower cut shirt or dress and still the man paid me no mind. By the seventh day my neckline cut almost down to my belly button, this provoked yet another stare, chuckle, and head shake. I had once again broken his stoic armor and proved my dominance over his will. He could not help but look in my direction and acknowledge my womanhood with the gazes. Two more days he repeated this behavior, yet still, he would not hold open the door.

At this time, I decided I had altered my body enough—surely I was more feminine and more beautiful than any other woman in that entire office building—so now I would try another tactic. Each day for a month I stood one step closer to the door than I had the day before, still, after thirty steps closer the man did not hold the door. Then, on the fortieth step, as the man opened the door, he looked at me, his eyes wide and fixated on my undeniable divine beauty, and he held the door. I nodded at him and then walked through. I was so enthralled and euphoric at my victory that I didn’t even notice I forgot to berate the man until five hours into my shift. I cursed myself for being so short-sighted. I had won, but only at the cost of abandoning the entire point of my plan. The next day I promised myself I would lay into the man and let him know exactly what I thought. Only, again, that did not happen. I walked through the door and then went about my day, ashamed that I could not dig up the courage to say anything to the man. He openly flaunted his misogyny and self-righteousness before me, and I did nothing to dissuade him from it.

This game of chicken went on for three weeks. Every day he held the door for me and every day I would cower away from calling the man out. The fourth or fifth time he held the door I stared at him for one or two seconds longer than before, yet I walked away. I thought over time it would be easier to gather the courage, but the opposite proved true. Each day I refused to speak up for myself made it harder to do so the next. It became a normal occurrence for the man to hold open the door. A line of four or five women all marched in line through the door this man held. Sometimes, on rare occasion as most of the employees in that office were women, some men would fall in line with the women to be ushered through the door by this man. Though, I could tell by the disappointment in his eyes that he loathed each man that took advantage of his kindness. After three weeks of this torment, I could not live with my shame any longer.

I stormed my way to the office door and waited for the man, tapping my foot as he meandered down the walkway. Finally, he approached the door, gave me a flustered look, and opened it while waving me on. I stepped through and then turned on the man and said, “I can open my own door, thank you! I, or any other woman, don’t need your pathetic, scrawny arms to open doors for us. We’re perfectly capable of doing so ourselves.” I wiped the spit from the sides of my mouth and then waited for the man to respond.

He stood there, mouth wide, the gears turning in his head as he contemplated the perfect response. He finally swallowed his conniving pride and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m just unlocking the building for you.”

“I don’t care what you are unlocking! I don’t need your help!” I screamed and then whipped back around and stomped to the stairwell where I lifted myself to the first step and then fainted.

2

I awoke sometime later to the discomfort of a hospital bed. The blanket scratched at my bare skin while thin foam covered in cheap plastic—a poor excuse for a mattress—did its best to provide a place for me to lay, but, like most things in your reality, the best was not good enough. I sighed and when I inhaled, I nearly gagged on the sterile air that filled my lungs. Everything attacked me with its inferiority and discomfort. I deserved better. Even then, when it seemed so impossible, I knew what I was owed. My head spun when I tried to get out of the bed, but I was not about to let that stop me. However, despite my insistence that nothing was wrong with me, there was most definitely something wrong with me.

You see, that is the most absolutely awful thing about your reality, it is a desperate dictator that refuses to give up power, no matter how hard anyone fights. For three days I tried to leave that godawful hospital, but they kept me bedridden. They tried telling me what caused it, but I would hear no such thing. I was no longer sick—I had not been for years—and I needed no doctor to tell me anything about myself. I know myself better than anyone and it is not a doctor’s job to tell me when I am sick. It is his job to listen to me when I tell him how I am sick and then attend to me in whatever way I wish him to attend to me. Any doctor that would deny a patient’s self-perception is denying what is so clearly the best course of action when it comes to all medicine—the patient knows best. And I certainly did know best, because in only three days I walked out of that hospital with barely a limp and a cane to lean on. I made it out by sheer will that I was not ill and that I had control over your reality. That gave me another vestige of hope that all was not in vein. That even though I did not have the metaverse to rely on, or to make me whole, your reality could crumble under the weight of my sheer will to defy it. Even while it held complete sway of my life, I had a hope that I might conquer your reality. For not only had I just conquered my greatest foe in the man that denied me, but I also had stumbled away from the condescending diagnoses of arrogant professionals.

I had no shoes; they took the ones I had and threw them away I presume. The floor grabbed my feet with the fervor of a child clasped to her mother’s breast—if only that child knew better as that floor should have known better. The ice the hospital tried to pass as a floor not only tore at my bare soles, but also nearly gave my extremities frost bite. As I stumbled through those hallways, exhausted from whatever cocktail of drugs the doctors had given to force me into bedrest as well as whatever physical ailment that I had yet to fully overcome, the sterile smell of death and clinical shine of fluorescent lights assaulted my senses. Blinded and suffocated I emerged from the final hallway into the waiting area, greeted by the first rays of natural light I had seen in days. Most people might have found such a sight endearing, but after growing somewhat accustomed to the frigid floors, the heat from the sun felt as if I had walked into the bowels of hell. There was and is no rest from the constant attacks of your reality. Each moment is a painful exodus to the next. And then as I thought your reality could do no more to spite me, he spoke.

“What did this to you?” The voice of that man I had done so well to forget asked me as I stumbled into the hospital waiting room and sat in a chair to rest my weary limbs after their arduous task.

“The same heartless ruler that lets you harass me with no consequence.” I looked up to find Lane sitting across from me in the waiting room. I had just stopped to take a rest, one that would give me the energy to take my last steps from the hospital and prove myself capable of defying your reality.

“You imply that ruler even has the power to stop this awful thing from occurring, but chooses not to,” Lane said.

“The world isn’t God, Lane. It just is,” I said.

“So say the theists.” Lane leaned back in a chair as a couple meandered through the waiting room looking for an open space to sit.

“Do you seek me out just so you can argue with me?” I asked.

“No, not in particular. We seem to just have an affinity to run into each other. That is all.”

“It seems oddly more than a coincidence,” I said.

“Do you ever think that perhaps this ruler does try and prevent terrible things from happening, but an equally powerful force is actively trying to cause them?”

“What force would that be?”

“Chaos,” Lane said, waving a hand.

I adjusted the strap on my bag as it slipped from my shoulder, I wanted to be ready to leave as soon as I felt rested. “You really thought about that one didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. Do you like it?”

“Not particularly. So in your fantasy, this ruler is in a constant struggle to perfect our world, but is thwarted by chaos?”

“Sure, why not.”

“How did this ruler come to rule if it cannot bring to pass its vision?” I asked.

“Maybe no one else could or can.”

“And maybe someone else can do it better and actually defeat this so-called chaos and accomplish the task of perfection your ruler cannot.”

“It’s a dangerous thing to struggle against the balance of reality. I don’t think it’s in our best interest to fight against a reality that has perfectly maintained itself for what we know as eternity.”

“You think this is perfect?” I said gesturing around myself.

“In a sense, yes.” Lane said with a stupid grin. The same grin I suddenly felt the urge to cut off his face; if only I had the strength or will power. “Just take a moment to think about the perpetual nature of, well, nature. At the most basic level, particles can stick together. They can be smashed, melded, forced, or even loosely bound together. And each configuration of particles changes how that group works. An atom with a single proton has different properties than an atom with two protons. Even as layers of complexity are added, such things still self-perpetuate. Invisible forces bring together particles to form more complex particles that continue to form more complex particles that all continue to self-perpetuate either in a new more complex form, the same form, or a new simpler form. All the while the inherent nature of some basic particles is to decay, to fall apart in a spectacular fashion. And as formations continue to increase in complexity so does their capacity to fall apart. Still, while all things crumble they still perpetuate anew. And without the inherent destructive nature of perpetuating particles, they would have no capacity to perpetuate. It is by their very capacity to fall apart and into nothing that they are able to continue. Without the opposing force that wills all particles back to their natural inert state, nothing could have existed beyond that very same inert state. A star, with the help of invisible forces, fights all its existence its inevitable collapse. Then in the collapse of a single massive entity is born a rich complex ecosystem of particles that would not have existed if it weren’t for the pull of the force that would destroy all things. And if it were that the force that would continue to bring all things to a perfect state lived without opposition, then the universe would have never grown beyond its initial inert state. For these two forces are in opposition to each other, always. One seeking to bring the universe to perfection and the other to bring it into chaos.”

I sighed, not only because I no longer wished to listen to this man ramble on any longer in his speculation of the forces that govern your reality. This pseudo-religious nonsense had no sway on what dictated my trajectory in coming out conqueror of the very same nonsense Lane attempted to convince me of. “I will not argue whatever point you want to make about the origins of this reality; however those origins have nothing to do with what life is now. And life is not perfect. Even with your ideas of balance in pursuit of perfection against chaos. Whatever agent of chaos that revels in the misery and suffering of the only known entities that have the capacity to recognize these ideas has had enough time as an opposing force. It no longer deserves to seek to destroy. That is what we can overcome. Complexity has reached us, and we can end the cycle of perpetuation unto destruction.”

“How do you propose you would do that?” Lane asked.

“I haven’t figured that out yet, but I know it’s possible. Every doctor in this place told me I wouldn’t be able to walk again. Yet here I am, walking out of this hospital.”

“You look like you’re sitting in this hospital to me,” Lane chuckled.

“Really?” I said and then with great effort stood and stepped toward Lane. “See? I can walk just fine. These doctors know nothing because they ascribe to whatever idea of reality they would have me give in to. I won’t give up, because what I will shall be done. That is what is possible. Every bit of reality pointed me in the direction of pain, misery, and disability. But I am here, yes in a bit of pain, but I am free from disability and will soon conquer misery.”

“Have you considered that the doctors were just wrong?”

I laughed. Of course the doctors were wrong. I just proved it. “They are wrong. That’s the point. It doesn’t matter that they are wrong, they still think they were right. And if I had never strived to defy them I would still be bedridden. I proved them wrong despite all their knowledge of how reality is supposed to work. I beat them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a bus to catch so I can rest at home.” I turned from Lane and left him before he could reasonably respond. He had spoken to me enough and I could no longer stand to listen to his madness.

The outside air was hot and made my skin sticky with sweat. How I bore the brunt of temperature will always be beyond me. Any climate other than a nice seventy-two degrees with no burning sun light, no wind, and not even a hint of overburdening humidity is hell. I waited at a bus stop just outside of the hospital. In retrospect, I should have alerted my parents to my departure from the hospital, it would have saved me the great pain of trying to ride a bus and then trying to hobble my way home from the bus stop, but I was in no mind to request assistance from those who would have had me rot in a hospital bed enslaved by my diagnosis. No, I would depart on my terms and with my 0wn power. All to prove myself victor over your reality. I waited in the sweltering sun, sitting on the bench in nothing more than a thin pair of pants, a white t-shirt, and no shoes. My hair tangled and waved in every direction, while my eyes sunk deep into my face. If I did not look homeless then at the very least I looked hopeless.

The bus pulled around the corner and came to a stop with a squeal and deafening puff of air. When the door opened, I let the others who waited at the stop go before me. I had no wallet and as a consequence no money. This particular bus required payment either through a bus pass or a few coins thrown into a slot. Both of which I had none.

I stepped onto the first step, in arduous effort, and met the bus driver’s big brown eyes. He sighed and said, “Look, lady, if you don’t have money or a pass I can’t let you on.”

There is plenty to hate about your reality, but among all those things this surely is worthiest of that hatred. People who lack compassion in favor of profit. There is no end to the overconsumption and overproduction. All things are produced in grand abundance and if there is anything left—there is always far more left over than is ever needed—it is tossed to the waste pile for the rats. The lowliest of all lifeforms has more claim to the excess of reality than even those people who you claim are of equal value to yourself. In the metaverse, all would truly be equal for there would be no excess and there would be no lack. All would have all they need without the need for waste that would do better for the impoverished.

And so I stood on the first step of that bus, looking over the otherwise almost entirely empty cabin and said, “Surely you can overlook this one incursion? I had to get out of a bad place and wasn’t able to take any money with me. There’s plenty of room on the bus.”

“Doesn’t matter how much room there is, ma’am, if the next stop fills the bus and I don’t have room for the paying passengers because some freeloader thought to take a free ride; that’s on me. You don’t just get to ride for free. Now, get off my bus,” the driver said, pulling the handle to reopen the doors behind me.

“What would you do if I refused?” I said.

“Please don’t do that. Just get off the bus,” the driver demanded.

“No,” I said. I needed a ride home and this tiny, weak man on a power trip was not going to stop me.

The driver stood and towered over me from the top of the two steps that separated us. “I have a schedule to keep and don’t have time for your nonsense, lady. Now, please, get off my bus.”

“Come on lady! Get off so we can go!” A passenger yelled from somewhere beyond the yellow line.

“No! I have just as much right to ride this bus as anyone else! Why should my lack of money determine whether or not I can ride this bus?” I yelled.

“Don’t matter to me why or why not. You just need to get off my bus,” the driver said as he stepped toward me and reached out his arms. I leaned forward, bracing myself for the inevitable shove that I knew would come so long as I stood there. Then, by no will of my own, my left foot stepped out of the bus. I stood half in and half out of the bus for a moment. I like to think that I stood for something then, but truly all I did was give in to the pressure of your reality. My right foot soon followed my left, and the bus groaned its way down the street without me. I sat on the bus stop bench, utterly defeated by my lack of conviction. How could I let them defeat me like that? I had just conquered the entirety of the medical profession. Thousands of years of physicians’ knowledge stood against me, and I had won. But when I stood on the precipice facing against a single man I backed down, how?

I would like to have you believe that I only did so because I was exhausted from the day’s events, though that would be a lie. And at the moment I do not think a lie to be beneficial to my story. While I have no qualms at misrepresenting what you may think of as truth, I do not like to make it a habit to say something that could be seen as a lie lest you think I am trying to deceive you. It would be simple to say that I did not back away from the bus driver but instead I confronted him. Instead, I said, “You may not care about anything other than your profit and getting your spare change so that you can go home thinking you did the right thing by following every single one of your pointless rules to the letter. I care, though. I care that people like you are so hell bent on forcing the less fortunate to conform to your perceived notion of what we must do to fit into the tiny box of whatever it is that makes up your reality. You are small minded, close minded, and stupid minded. I may take up space from someone who can pay, but that is worth it because you will be assisting me in my very survival, because if I cannot take this bus, I will surely die. And sir, that would be on you.”

However, I said none of those things. I sat on the bench, dumbfounded by my own ineptitude at enforcing my righteous truth on that man and those on the bus. An opportunity to truly sound the alarm on the woes of their current perceptions of reality had landed in my lap and I let it slip away without even a word. My cowardice cost me a few souls that may have joined the metaverse because of my words. I failed them and doomed them to life in your twisted world.

I do not know how long I spent sitting on that bench, but I do know that several buses had come and gone picking up and dropping off their deluge of passengers with each occurrence. Each time I made sure to lock eyes with the driver and let him know what pain and torment I had been subjected to at the hands of one of their colleagues. As I expected, none of them sought to make amends for the first driver’s misdeeds. Instead, they decided to add onto them and leave me behind in the scorching sun to fend for myself, a lone, fatally tired woman, in the middle of a small city.

“What are you still doing here?” Lane’s voice came from behind, grating in my sweat-drowned ears.

“I missed the bus,” I said, too tired to argue with the obstinate man.

“Seems as if you’ve missed a few busses, what was your plan here?” Lane asked, taking a seat next to me. If the day was cold and I shivering, I might have enjoyed the extra body heat, but it was not. It was sweltering and even the small amount of heat that emanated from Lane’s body caused such discomfort that I scooted as far from him as the bench would allow, without me having to stand up.

“I planned to go home, but the all-powerful drivers refuse to let me ride,” I said.

“Why would they do that? You seem to be reasonable enough of a person.”

“They hate me because they know I am right,” I lied, again.

“I know that’s not true. You don’t have any money, do you?” Lane said, as always too perceptive for my liking. The man had somehow devised a window into my thoughts.

“Where would I have gotten money? My parents took from me all my belongings the last they visited me. They knew this would happen. They could see my determination to leave that frigid nightmare and knew I could do it. And then, in an effort to assuage me from returning home, they stole my things and then faded away into the night.” I had to steady myself as a seething rage bubbled over, a rage left over from a lifetime of receiving hatred from those who were supposed to love me above anyone else.

“Do you seriously think your parents wanted to strand you in the hospital?”

Lane’s naiveté almost made me laugh. The man had no idea the level of vitriol my parents were capable of. They tried at every moment to keep me from happiness. Even as I lay dying in the hospital bed, only a few days earlier, they celebrated my ills.

“How long will they have you here?” My father asked, his eyes wide with anticipation.

“I don’t know, they haven’t said,” I answered with a lie. The doctor’s had told me at least a week. I could see my father’s eyes fill with hope, hope that I would remain there indefinitely.

“Well, that’s not right. I’ll go check on that,” my mother said, just as insistent that I never come home.

“It’s fine, mother. Just leave it alone,” I said.

“Okay, dear. Are you comfortable? Do you need anything from home?” she had already asked me that. The only reason she asked was not because she cared about my comfort, but because she wished to declutter the stack of boxes that came from my old apartment. I had at the very least informed my parents that I could no longer live on my own and working would not be possible. They did not invite me to stay with them. When I first told them of the reappearance my of injuries, they stood, dumbfounded, and I had to insist that I live with them. If I had not, I would have died on the streets and my parents would have celebrated the lifting of their burden, but I would not let them off so easy. I refused to just die. I refused to become a vegetable that would alleviate them from having to deal with me. No, I would persist in health just enough to spite them from wherever I pleased. Yet, I would remain incapacitated enough to stay free from a life of slavery. All my life my parents had been trying to be rid of me, and all mine I had played along, but in that hospital bed as my father imagined how great his life would be without me in it and as my mother sought to pawn away all my belongings I refused to play their game.

“No, mother. I’m fine. Can you just let me rest?”

“Fine, dear, we’ll leave you be,” my mother said, “Don’t worry about us, we’re just concerned about you is all. We just wanted you to know we loved you. Come home soon, okay?”

And just as soon as they arrived, they were gone. They had paid their dues; they had attempted to persuade themselves of a façade of love. The doctors and nurses saw them excrete the social niceties required by parental dogma. Even you, who likely read their words and thinks, “Oh, they aren’t that bad. They just care about you,” have fallen for their trap. I could very well make them out to be as evil as I’d like, in fact, I’d very much like that. You would believe me too. You would read the words of abuse they threw at me and pity my sorrowful existence. But I am not seeking pity. I am telling a story that is true. You will read the words of what looks like loving parents, and you will see how it is that they convinced the world that they loved me. And because you were not there, because you did not live through the pain of having parents who hate you, you will always only see the pretense they displayed for you to see. However, I could see through it. I saw through all of it. And you must believe me because I am the one telling this story. You have no reason not to believe me. My parents were monsters and they hated me. They wanted me to rot in a hospital bed, they wanted me to die in the streets, they wanted me to fall ill from surgeries I did not need, they wanted me to slave away for a company that despised me almost as much as they did, and most of all they wanted me to live in misery. But despite all that I would see them fail. I walked out of that hospital, by my own determination. And soon enough I would show them they could not force me to live in misery.

I looked at Lane, exhausted and nauseated, “Yes, they did want me stranded here.”

Lane stared at me, not knowing how to respond. He opened his mouth a few times but pulled back and just sighed. Eventually he said, “Here, take some cash. Get yourself home and get some rest.” Lane dropped a pile of coins into my hand and smiled. “It’s the least I could do after annoying you so much.”

Lane thought he was being funny, but truly he was just right. He did owe me for being irritating. Still, I smiled. I do not know if I thought it was funny or if I was just relieved to know I would be able to get home.

“No need to thank me,” Lane said.

“Good, I wasn’t going to,” I said.

“I didn’t expect it,” Lane said and then left me alone on the bench.

With my cash in hand the bus driver no longer stood as a barrier to my exodus. I rode the bus to the closest stop to my parents’ home and then departed toward it with a haste I have not since mustered. The half-a-mile walk to their house left my feet bruise, battered, and almost broken. My shirt was soaked in a salty sweat and my vision blurred from the pain in my legs. Still, I made it to the front door and knocked.

My father came first to the door, “Dear god! What are you doing here?”

His surprised greeting came as no surprise to me. He had expected me to remain in the hospital forever. I had just devastated his deepest desire. “Hello father,” I said.

“How did you get home? You can’t hardly walk!”

I leaned against the door and coughed. I had been standing outside of their house in abject misery, yet my father refused to let me by so I could collapse on my bed. “I can walk enough.”

“Who is it?” My mother peered at me from behind my father’s head. “Oh my!” she shouted and pushed past him to grab my waist. “What are you doing? Help her inside.” My whole life my mother’s act had always been much more convincing than my father’s. He could not hide his disdain for me as masterfully as she could. At any moment she was ready to feign care for me, while my father usually took a few minutes to build up to it.

“I’m fine, mother. I can get to the bed myself.”

“Nonsense,” she said as my father put my arm around his neck and helped me to the stairs. I tried to protest, but at that point I could no longer speak as my vision blacked out and my mind turned to darkness. For weeks I spent my time writhing in pain, bedridden. I could hardly make my way to the bathroom without collapsing and needing my father or mother to help me back to bed. All the while I could see the joy of my misery fueling in my parents a sick pleasure. The pain and torment from my months spent recovering from that accident fled back into my mind. At that time I still held to a bit of hope that my parents had at least cared a little, but finally, in their indecency to me while I laid suffering and useless a second time, I saw the same hatred. All the while my hatred for a reality that would allow such suffering to exist festered. No medicine or treatment seemed to alleviate my suffering. Though it did eventually lessen to a point where I could function, at least partially, I could not entirely escape from it. And each day I grew closer to realizing that while I lived in your reality, this pain was something I could never escape.

3

I spent the next year or so searching for a way into the metaverse. At any time and from anywhere I could slip on my VR glasses and be transported to whatever world I chose. Though, the world was not real. Each time I entered into a VR system I could feel the lie. Each VR system could only accomplish the envelopment of two senses—sight and hearing. While that did provide a fairly convincing reality for some people, it was not enough for a true revolution to take place. I wanted more. I needed more. I was owed more. Your reality had committed atrocity after atrocity against me and I would no longer be held as a slave to it. From the day I overcame my injuries, I knew that I could lord myself over your reality.

Walking had become a chore—well that is another lie, walking had always been a chore to me—and having to waddle about with a cane in hand and exhaustion behind my eyes hurt too much. Your reality so despised me that it did all it could to dissuade me from seeking alternatives. This is how I knew those paltry excuses for virtual reality were just lies. Reality is not virtual, it is real. There was nothing real in those glasses, my pain still persisted beyond the sounds and images. Intrusive thoughts bore into me like a mole through dirt. I could not keep myself from the constant awareness that something just was not right. It always felt wrong to be living and for some time I contemplated suicide. But I am a spiteful woman and spite cannot be delivered through suicide. I have seen the horrors of it and anyone who claims to be spiteful or otherwise aspires to the adjective would not commit such violence against themselves. For there is no greater spite to reality than to continue living despite its attempts toward the contrary.

That year I lived with my parents in the second-floor bedroom, which I had all to myself; except, of course, the closet, which my parents used as storage for some inconsequential food supplies. They did all they could to keep me alive just so they could show me how much they hated me. I could not even have a room to myself, much less my own apartment. They imposed onto my life restrictions that oppressed my reality. There are those who live with such lavish excess, who take and take and take and give nothing in return, having done nothing in your world to deserve it save having been birthed into the right family. Even still, there are those who have worked only to be rewarded disproportionately with the means to own whole countries if they so choose. Yet, I, a single woman who could hardly walk, was expected to work until the day I died when these people—my parents included—were perfectly capable of taking care of me. I only asked to be given what I was owed for having been forced to live: comfort, acceptance, and love. Comfort from the support of those who have more than they need, acceptance from those who would otherwise deny, and love from those who would hate. It is difficult enough to bear the burden of life and contradicting reality without also having to be forced to ensure my own life continues. That is not my responsibility, it is the responsibility of those who wished me to live and those who wish me to consume.

I hobbled through the living room and into the kitchen where both my parents sat at a small table for their evening meal. My younger brother and his family joined them. I gave them a scowl. My brother despised me, as did his wife. So, I returned hatred with scorn. His single kid gave me a dirty look, but I would ignore it that night. I had too great a mood to let such trivial games disturb me. You see, I never left my room unless I had a mood for it, as moving around brought me intense pain—a constant reminder that I had yet to have beaten your reality. That day I had quite the mood for it, despite having access to enough virtual connections and social interactions to fill my life a hundred times over, I occasionally recognized in myself a need to satisfy some primal urge to interact with real living people. (Yet another proof of how awful your reality truly is, you must constantly placate these relics of millions of years of biology that you have yet to evolve beyond.) And on that day I decided I could no longer ignore this need for socialization, an opportunity I would take to prove my reality over your own.

“Evening,” I said, keeping my words brief, while I was in a perky mood I did not wish to start an argument that would embarrass my family. Often my brother would attempt to provoke me, but it would always end with him shying back in defeat from my superior intelligence. That has been the case since we were small children. He would approach me with inane ideas or statements and then attempt to prove them to me, which he failed to do time and time again. I remember dearly the time he tried to claim to me his favorite color was green.

“That’s my favorite color!” the little idiot would pronounce pointing toward the red and orange leaves of a tree in the fall.

“Orange or red?” I asked, though he was only five at the time I still think he should have known picking two favorite colors and claiming they are one color was within his cognitive ability.

“No, green! Leaves are green, the book said.” He waved his pudgy little arms about, as if that would make him right.

Those tree leaves were not green, they were red and orange. Either my brother had been lied to or he was trying to make me look like a fool by getting me to agree to his fantasy. At the time I had not yet concluded my reality could win out over your own. That came much later in my life. Though I do now seek to bring down the ideas that you perpetuate with your ‘objective’ truth and reality, when I was young I was naïve. I believed in that reality. My little brother so blatantly defying it, troubled me. While you and I may both have agreed, at the time, that the leaves were red, I could not let my brother be right. In this circumstance he just so happened to be wrong in a way that requires me to agree with you. Of course, if we were in the metaverse then none of this would have even mattered. My brother would have claimed his favorite color to be green—or the color of the leaf—pointing at a red leaf and he would be correct. As I would be correct to say that the leaf was not green, but red. However, we were not in the metaverse, we were in your reality. So, I worked with what I had. The leaves were red, so said I and so say you. My brother said they were green, which to me was wrong, and I am never wrong.

“Those leaves aren’t green. They are red,” I said.

“No, leaves are green!” The stupid boy shouted at me now, obviously angry at being corrected.

“You’re wrong. They’re red. Look at them. Are they the same color as the grass?” I asked pointing to the grass.

“Yea, kind of,” he said, reaching down to pull grass from the ground.

“No, they aren’t. They’re different,” I said.

“It’s green!” He shouted one last time before running away crying.

Never could my brother stand up to argument or criticism. As of late he had taken just shaking or nodding his head, so utterly defeated he refused to engage in argument with me. He had given up all those years ago when I had destroyed him in our debate about his favorite color—which I know to be red, not green—and I am certain he carries that shame with him each time we interact. Now, he has every right to believe that red is green, but he made the grave mistake of trying to impose that reality on me. I cannot accept such awful violence. He insisted the leaves were green when I said they were red. Not once did he acquiesce or even think to acknowledge that I might be right. He just ran off, crying and admitting defeat by avoiding the battle. Though the victory was sweet, it did not bring me the satisfaction I deserved. He never did admit to me his folly and likely never will. Still, he continued to insist on his own reality lording over mine. I had to prove him wrong. I looked to my brother and smiled.

“Oh no, not this again,” he said. I don’t know what he meant by that; all I did was give him an innocent smile.

“There is no, ‘this again’, dear brother,” I said, tapping my fork on my plate, my mom had yet to serve the food.

“That’s what ‘this again’ is. You looked at me. You only look at me when you have something ridiculous to say.” He reached over the table and pulled to him and his family the bowl of corn; the very same bowl of corn I was just about to reach for. He knew. He knew and he grabbed it anyway. Even then, as I sat harmless at the table, my brother sought to erase me, this time by starvation. Very well, then I would make him suffer.

“Don’t you remember, brother.” I stared at the bowl of corn, the only food on the table at the moment. I continued, “When you thought your favorite color was green?”

“Let it go!” He shouted, dropping a spoonful of corn back into the bowl. Good, there would be more for me.

“No, I can’t just let it go. I wish you all could have seen him, the stupid little boy pointed right at the leaves of a maple in the middle of October. They were red as blood and he just exclaims to me his favorite color is green, like the color of those leaves,” I said as my mother set down a casserole dish filled with some sort of cheesy slop I certainly had no interest in eating. I scowled at the food and pushed it farther toward the center of the table to keep distance from me and the horrific mess that was my mother’s cooking. I swear she tried to poison me with it, but that is a story for another time. We are not talking about my mother; we are talking about my brother.

“That was twenty years ago, why do you even remember that?” he said, pushing the corn bowl against the casserole dish, just out of my sitting arm’s reach. Certainly I could have grabbed it if I stood, but I should not have to stand to grab my food. My brother was perfectly capable of moving it to my side of the dish and he deliberately kept it far from me so I would be forced to stand and get it. I refused to play his games.

“I remember it because it stood out to me as particularly garish because of how adamant you were to insist that red was green. And yet, now, you have the audacity to talk with me about objective truths and all this nonsense, when you yourself live outside of the very reality that you seek to defend!” I let my fork fall to my plate. The action seemed more dramatic in my head, but once I actually dropped my fork I realized it just made it seem I lacked control. That was my mistake.

“I was five,” is all my brother said.

I looked to his son. “When you were five, did you know that green wasn’t red?” The boy looked first to his dad, who scowled at him, and then the boy turned his attention to his plate, now filled with cheesy goop, corn, and a baked potato.

“You don’t need his permission to answer, child, you control your life, not him,” I said.

“You don’t either,” the kid mumbled into his plate, just loud enough so I could hear. That cut me deep. What did he mean I did not control his life? Certainly I knew far better than my stupid nephew on what was right and wrong. Who was he to question my reality over his? I was on his side. I was trying to show him how he could free himself from the oppression of his father. He did not have to look to his father for permission to answer my question. The kid did not need to ask permission to mock his father. The boy was obviously so terrified of what his dad might do to him if he even so much as acknowledged my argument, that thinking, as a boy, that red is green is ridiculous. Again, it is not actually ridiculous, because who am I to tell someone that they cannot call what they see whatever they want? The metaverse would work just like that but I did not live in the metaverse. Besides, this was not an argument in which I wanted to get the boy to discover the truth of reality, it was an argument where I wanted to prove to the boy—and to my whole family—of how stupid my brother is.

“Well no, I don’t, but at least I know my colors.” I glanced at my brother.

“Just shut up, please. Can you go back to your hole and leave us alone? We were having a nice evening,” he said.

“Perhaps your brother is right,” my father finally pulled his mouth away from his food long enough to acknowledge the events in front of him.

“Honey, can you just eat and let everyone be tonight? We don’t need to antagonize each other all the time. Just enjoy the company. Please?” my mother said.

As always both my parents took the side of my brother, who so obviously had antagonized me first. He started this feud the moment he was born and cried the first time I held him. It was just how our relationship worked. He hated me first, so I hated him back. It is the only logical way to respond, hatred with hatred, love with love, violence with violence. While my brother never resorted to physical violence, he teetered on the edge of dictated violence. His words, and that of his idiot kid, tore through me with the force of a nine-millimeter bullet. At least I think they did. I have never been shot before.

“Well, Mother,” I said, wiping my mouth with the napkin next to my plate—despite not having eaten anything— “If that’s how you all see it, I guess I should just go then.”

“Good,” my brother snarled and his child chuckled.

“But I won’t,” I said. I never had any intention of leaving. I had not even eaten dinner yet. My spite knows no bounds and to leave while I was so close to breaking my brother and his dolt of a son would be giving up on what is more than two-thirds of my identity. I identified as spite and I have ever since.

My chair screeched against the hardwood floor as I stood to scoop a serving of cheesy mush onto my plate. I reached over the casserole tin, letting my shirt sleeve drag over the food, and pulled the bowl of corn around the dish. The bowl shoved aside plates and silverware, knocking them into cups and close to the edge of the table. I did not wish anything to fall off, just that they all knew I could have if I truly wished it.

“This looks delicious, Mother,” I said as I used my fork to pick up a small piece of goop and drop it into my mouth. The stringy cheese spread over my tongue as a red tomato sauce spilled out of the goop and filled my mouth with an acrid, yet sweet flavor. It was disgusting. I held back a gag and kept my composure.

“It would be best if you go,” my father said, “We let you stay here, considering if we didn’t you’d likely die on the street, but we won’t tolerate this ill behavior toward your brother and his family. Take your food to your room if you have to but leave us be for the evening.”

There it was my father once again coming to my brother’s rescue after I so thoroughly destroyed him and his argument. He sat in his chair staring at his plate with a sheepish grin. My brother spent his entire life hiding behind the authority of my father, if my life’s purpose was to spite my parents, his purpose was to spite me through my parents. As much as I wanted to resist my father’s request, I had to obey. Already my brother had caused several disturbances between the two of us and each time my father would blame me for it. At the time I feared for my safety if I defied my father’s orders. My spite would be overcome by a sense of survival, I am ashamed to say.

“Very well,” I said pushing my plate into the casserole dish, which ran into the boy’s plate, knocking it into his lap. The horrific main course splattered from the plate onto the child’s clothes and then to the floor. I had not meant to spill the food, but I can say I was not disappointed when it fell.

“Can you not just let us be for one night! Are you going to help clean this up or just stand there?” My brother shouted.

“I’m sorry, but I have to go now. Father asked me to leave, and I can’t stay when he doesn’t wish it.” I gripped my cane and then limped my way out of the kitchen and toward the front door. Once again my family had proven they could do nothing but hate me, regardless of how I tried to convince them. They would never see me as I wanted and always I would lurk among them as a pariah simply because I have continuously been a burden on them through no fault of my own. I was done trying to convince them; the only thing left to do was to leave them behind.

4

The rain stopped an hour after I stepped onto the porch. I did not have an umbrella or a raincoat, so I waited on the porch until the last drop dripped from the roof down the gutter pipe. No amount of coercion, demanding, or yelling could have gotten me to leave, and I expected that to happen. But no one followed after me. They remained inside, chatting amongst themselves. I pressed my ear to the door—to see how much they would disparage me in my absence—but I did not hear a single word about me. Their night went on, in seeming joy, without my presence. I know the truth, however. Each of them was so devastatingly distraught to have their reality shattered by my own that they could not help but attempt to live on and ignore their pain.

When the rain stopped, and I had satisfied my curiosity with my family’s doings I decided to go for a walk. I had not left my parent’s home for several weeks, but my body yearned for outdoor exposure. It needed these occasional outings to keep it from making me inconsolably miserable. I was not happy about it, but it had to be done. While I tried everything I could to ignore the urges, I had yet to discipline myself enough to completely ascend from your reality and into one of my own creation. The longest I had gone without appeasing the primitive needs of my body was sixteen hours. I would have gone longer, but out of fear of soiling myself and from starvation, I broke away from the virtual reality. At some point while in a VR system I would always be brought back to pain, hunger, and the need for defecation. The metaverse offered to me a better way, but still I was stuck with hollow clones. I looked out from the porch and saw before me the damp and cold world. One that I might have found beautiful only a decade prior. Now, that world looked dreary and hateful, and my eyes did not lie. Beyond that porch was a world that would do everything it could to kill me. My family showed to me they would do everything they could, in as passive a way as they could manage, to be rid of me. No longer could I be satisfied with the shallow imitations of the metaverse I had entertained. Taking my leave from my parent’s home that night was the first step I needed to take to finally make my way to the metaverse.

As I walked down the street toward the nearby convenience store I spotted a man approaching me from the opposite end of the street. I braced myself to be assaulted by him.

“Hello!” the man called. I ignored him and kept moving down the road at a quickened pace.

“Woah now! No need to hurry. Don’t hurt yourself. Do you need any help?” He asked.

“Do I look like I need help?” I scowled and kept walking.

“Well, yea, you’ve been dragging a limp leg down the road for a ways and you looked to be in pain. Did something happen? Can I call someone for you?” He walked alongside me, despite me never having given him permission to do so.

“I’m fine,” I said, not in the mood to engage in this man’s attempt at conversation. He obviously used my injured leg as an excuse to talk with me. He saw my womanly form and voluptuous body from across the street and could not help but approach me in an attempt to seduce me. I was not having it that night.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you when you need some help. My name’s Ron, by the way,” he said holding out a hand to shake.

“Ron?” I said, ignoring his hand. Though I despised him for approaching me in such a condescending manner, I then thought I might get something from him, nothing sexual—of course—but more so financial. My parents only gave me so much to live off of and anything beyond room and board they had staunchly refused to increase my living stipend, despite me being no longer able to work. They had more than enough money to support me and all my wants, however they deliberately chose to give me just enough that I might subsist in misery and torment under their control. I was a slave to them and to the tiny government disability checks I received, unable to use it to establish any sort of entrepreneurial endeavor.

“Yes, that’s me. And you are?” His eyes glanced down and then back to my face.

“I am me and now that I think about it, I could use some help,” I said holding out my arm for him to take.

“Do you need me to call someone?” He asked.

“No, just help me get to the store down the road and I’ll have what I need.” In the short time it would take to get to the store this man would be putty in my hands. He would give me anything I wanted.

“Sure, I guess I can do that,” Ron said looping his arm around my own. At first we walked in silence, but Ron could not help himself.

“Do you work?” He asked.

“No,” I said. Ron nodded and then looked down the street toward the corner where the convenience store stood.

“Do you live around here?”

“Yes, just down the road.”

“Oh, that’s good, so you won’t have much trouble getting a ride home from someone then?”

“I have no one to give me a ride.” A small lie would go a long way in molding this man to my desire.

“Oh,” he said and then looked down.

“It’s fine. I don’t need anyone to give me rides. Usually I’ll call a car, but I thought today I’d go for a short walk. I didn’t think it’d take me so long to go anywhere though,” I said, laying my trap. It is easy to coerce strangers. You all have a need to be seen as the hero and all I need do is let you. I am but a strange woman, lost and confused. How great would you be if you could save me? But you are wrong. I am not the one in need of saving. You are. Ron was. He came to me to appease his own sense of self-importance, not to help another person in need. If he truly wanted to help he would not have offered to, he would have just done so.

“I’m sorry for being rude before, it’s just people don’t often come up to me with good intentions,” I said. Cars drove on, headlights illuminating Ron and I for the briefest of moments.

“That’s fine,” Ron seemed disinterested in me now, especially as more cars kept speeding past. His eyes watched the cars with intent focus, and then they would look back to me. I had given in to his ploy too quickly. We were only a minute away from the store, I needed to find a way to keep him on my leash.

“No, it’s not fine. You see, I actually do have people that usually help me around, my parents and my brother, but they didn’t want anything to do with me today. We were having dinner,” I wiped my eyes of fake tears. Ron didn’t seem to notice, his eyes locked on the store. “Well, I don’t want to bore you with the details.”

“Should you call them to come help? I don’t want to poke my nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“No, I’m glad for your help. I don’t need them anymore.” I tightened my grip around his arm. Though I had never strictly attempted to seduce a man before in my life, it looked easy enough. I had seen enough movies, videos, and heard women talk about the matter far more than was needed to master the craft. Soon enough, Ron would be giving me everything. The man tried to pull away from my grip, I assumed so he could wrap his arms around me entirely, not just around my one arm.

“Yeah, sure,” Ron said, yanking his arm free from my own. The store was still a ways down the dark street. Ron’s head darted between me and the street. A car had not driven by for more than a minute. He leaned out, looking up the street both ways. Then, in an instant, he pulled a small knife from his pocket and stuck to my side and hissed, “Give me your wallet, or whatever you carry!”

And again your reality had proved me right. I knew Ron had intended me nothing but ill will, still in my naivety I thought I could turn the tables on him. “I don’t have anything,” I said. Ron’s knife pushed into me; I could feel a small trickle of blood run down my stomach.

“Shut up and just give it to me, hurry! And don’t say another word,” Ron wiggled the knife and drew more blood. I stifled a scream and just nodded. It took every ounce of willpower I had to prevent tears from bursting into my eyes. I reached into pocket and pulled it inside out and then did the same with the other. Nothing in either one. While I could not speak for the fear of my life, I could impose my will. In much the same way I had done while doctor after doctor told me I would never walk again. I had beaten reality before, and I would do so again. Ron would not take anything from me. He would not kill me. I would not allow it. I would beat him, and he would run from me, in fear of his life.

Ron kept the knife pressed against me and with the other hand inspected my pockets. He then rummaged up and down my body, searching for anything. When he found nothing, he sighed, “Figures the cripple is worthless.” Then the street lit up with the light of an oncoming car. Ron’s head shot up and pulled the knife away. “Useless woman,” he yelled as he pulled at his jacket, shoved me to ground, and ran. I tried to stand back up, but only lay there for a few minutes, writhing in the pain of my breaking body. Ron had done exactly what I expected of him, still I had beat him. Just in the same way I beat those wretched doctors. By sheer force of will, I imposed my reality over your own, but only partly. While I had not accomplished my task fully, I still reveled in my victory at making Ron run with fear of his own desire. Still, I hoped to obtain a financial reward as well. My parents gave me no money that month beyond the money for food they had given me to eat. I needed more because I deserved more. I needed as much as I could muster to save for an attempt to gain access to the metaverse. The cash I had saved from my old job was not enough and any extra would help as the cash I was getting was not enough.

I stared into the night sky until I could stand. When I did I saw out of the corner of my eye, a brown wallet laying on the ground. I would have liked to ignore it, seeing how painful it would be to pick it up, but I am ashamed to say my curiosity got the better of me. Again, the circumstances of living in your reality predisposed me to pick up that wallet. I could not help it. It is an innate trait of your reality that you must give into the base biological desires of your body. Even if it is detrimental to both your morals and your physical wellbeing. Think of the dare devil who cannot resist the urge to leap from cliffs or from jumping over canyons. This person cannot resist the biological addiction to adrenaline, so the dare devil seeks to satisfy that need even unto death.

And so, I, living momentarily as the dare devil would, reached down—opposed to my physical wellbeing—and picked up the brown lumpy wallet. Ron seemed to have dropped it when running away. On the inside was the I.D. of a man I had never man, one Johnathon Riley. I thought about returning it to him, but I had just defeated a man who threatened my life. Surely this wallet had come to me because I deserved it. Returning Johnathon’s wallet would be too much of a pain and Ron had already caused me more pain then necessary.

Jonathon kept two credit cards, one debit card, and $43.21 in his wallet. I assume he carried that with him always, how tedious it must have been for him to consistently be sure he had $43.21 in his wallet at all times, but he perhaps he was the kind of person that would be anal about such minor details. The cash I would leave, it was not mine and I did not wish to interrupt the delicate balance of Jonathon’s wallet, however, he did have a debit card and within his wallet was his driver’s license, which I gladly inspected.

In the next few minutes I had walked to the convenience store, pulling a hood over my head, and putting on one of my pocket cloth masks. Out of pure curiosity I put the debit card into the ATM at the store, being sure to cover my eyes with the hood and face with my mask, just so I could see if the card actually worked. It did, but it asked for a PIN, and I did not have that. So, I guessed. First his birthday, but Johnathon had outsmarted me there. So, next I tried the last four numbers of his driver’s license and not to my surprise it worked. Jonathon carried over $7,000 in his bank account at one time, never had I seen so much excess in cash, certainly he did not need all that. So, I withdrew all but one thousand. However, the card had a transaction limit of a thousand. Whoever set a limit on these things was an outright idiot, it’s my money, why limit how much of it I can take? Anyway, after six more transactions I had my six thousand dollars and I promptly left the store, dropping the wallet back on the ground where I had found it.

You might be thinking that I am a thief, but I am not. I have never once stolen from anyone. I have simply taken what was already mine and what I am owed. I lived in a country of lavish excess, where the people would spend hundreds on food only to throw it out the next day. Truckloads of meat would be left to rot rather than given to those who would need it. The middle and upper class had far more than they ever needed and owed it to those who had lived oppressed for as long as I had to give up their excess for my own comfort. Jonathon certainly did not need those six thousand dollars, otherwise he would have used it already. Anyone with money to spare, laying around doing nothing, has no need for that money. Really, I did Jonathon a favor, now he would contribute and help in the way he surely sought to do when he first approached me.

At that moment, I knew exactly what my newfound wealth would provide to me. No longer would I need to settle for barely immersive VR systems. For years I defied your reality, and with this money I could finally ascend it. I needed to ascend beyond it because despite my success in defying your reality, I still walked with a lame leg, infections terrorized my chest, and my hair had begun to fall from my head. I had done all I could to disparage and deny reality, but I knew that I could only beat it in the metaverse. I sat on the corner of the road, just across from where I dropped the wallet, and stared at the massive chunk of bills I held in my hand. It was not so much, in the grand scheme of things, but it was enough for my humble and insignificant self to gawk in awe at the grandeur of it. For one such as I, who had lived off the subsistence given to me in minimum by hateful parents and a scornful government, to see such possibility in so small a sum was empowering. My ultimate plans to subvert your reality entirely, and to prove definitively to all that I am the god of my own world, had begun to come to fruition.

“That’s quite the stack you got there,” a familiar ephemeral voice startled me from my musing.

I looked up to find the man Lane standing above me. The same man who accosted me at my surgical visit. “What are you doing here?” I said.

“I thought it would be nice to go for a stroll, same as you I suppose,” Lane said. “May I sit next to you?”

“No,” I said. Lane sat anyway. “I said no.”

“You know it’s not safe to be walking around at night with that much money. Doesn’t matter how safe you think this neighborhood is. I’ve heard some things about it. Seen some things. You’ve seen them too, no?”

He went off again, ignoring my protestations, insisting on invading my space and disrespecting my commands. “I told you no!” I said in a stern voice.

“Oh, I thought you were kidding. You seemed like you needed someone to talk to,” Lane stood up.

“I don’t, so go. Are you stalking me again?” I asked.

“I never stalked you before, so no.”

“I don’t have time for this. I have to get home. So, if you’ll excuse me.”

I stood from the curb and turned my back on Lane. In my haste to leave dinner I left my phone in the house and could not call anyone for help. There was no choice for me but to walk home, without assistance from anyone but myself, for who could I trust to not take advantage of my weakness and steal from me my wealth? Certainly not Lane. I tucked the money into my bra and then limped down the road as fast as my torment would allow.

“You look ridiculous, you know?” Lane called after me.

I ignored him until I heard his footsteps drawing close to me.

“That’s not your money is it?” He said.

I whipped around on him and my eyes low, my lips turned down, and my nose scrunched, giving Lane the most intimidating look I could muster.

“Is it?” He repeated, unphased by my glare.

“It is my money,” I said, seeing no way to rid myself of this irritating man except to talk him into nonexistence.

“Then why are you hiding it?”

“Didn’t you just say it wasn’t safe? I’m hiding it for safety,” I said. My hand shot to cover my face from the headlights of an oncoming car. Surely by then someone searched for the stolen money. Jonathan had no doubt discovered his money had gone missing and assumed that it had been stolen. I heard the sirens of a distant police cruiser and then crouched low behind a bush.

“If it’s your money why are you hiding from cars?” Lane asked, standing in the open talking to a bush.

“Go away! You’re bringing too much attention to me.” I shooed Lane off with my free hand, the other still covering my face. I peered out every so often to see if flashing lights pulsed on either end of the road. When I saw nothing I continued on. Though a person who does not suffer from my afflictions could walk to my parents’ home in five or so minutes from that store, the same walk took me thirty or more, an eternity if Lane would follow me the entire way. If he did, I would call the police myself when I got home, even if it meant my cash might go with Lane when they hauled him off for harassing me.

“I think you bring that attention to yourself. You don’t exactly move about normally,” Lane said gesturing to my leg. It did not matter that he was right. Sure, I often had to pause to rest my leg, adjust my clothing, and check to ensure my cash remained secure. That did not mean he did not draw even more attention than I would to myself.

“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” I almost screamed but strained to keep my voice low.

“I can’t just leave you like this. We haven’t gone too far from the gas station. I’m sure you can still give it back,” Lane said.

“Give what back?”

“The money you stole.”

“I told you it’s mine.”

“I know it’s not yours. I saw you take it.”

“You’re lying. There was nothing to see but me withdrawing my own money. What use would another person have for it except to give it to me?”

Lane stopped walking beside me for a moment, if my legs worked properly I would have left him then. I could not, however, and remained hobbling down the road, Lane within reach.

“I won’t turn you in, if you that’s what you’re thinking. It’s not in either mine or your best interest to do that. Even if you choose to keep it. I’ll let it all go. But you shouldn’t keep it. Jonathon kept that money for a reason. I don’t know what it was, but it was his to keep. Doesn’t matter what reason he had. It’s not yours. What possible reason do you think is good enough to steal all that money from another person?”

“Have you ever been entirely incapable of producing your own increase?” I asked.

“No,” Lane admitted, his lionlike demeaner only seconds prior had diminished to that of a sheep.

“Then what could you possibly know about what’s in my best interest? Three years ago I was perfectly capable of working and making my own money. Then, through no fault of my own, I fell ill and despite all my will to ‘walk it off’, as some would say, I remain incapacitated. It takes me thirty minutes to walk a couple hundred feet down the road! How is that fair?”

“You have a place to live, you’re not starving, and you’ve got a family that loves you.”

“God you’re naïve, or an idiot. I’m not sure which, perhaps both. What good is a loving family if all they do is show me hatred? What good is food if I am enslaved to those who provide it? And what good is shelter if it is my prison? I finally have a single chance to escape all that with my own means and you’re telling me that I have to give it up because some guy might be sad he gave away his money? I’m sure he’ll be fine. Me, on the other hand, I don’t know if I will without this.”

Lane sighed and then looked down the street and back to me. “Look, I won’t give you up. Keep the money, or don’t, but you know it’s wrong. It doesn’t matter where you came from or what your circumstance is, taking that money from an innocent man is wrong and I know you know it.”

“Wrong according to who?”

“To the law. To the people who live under that law. And to morality.”

“Nonsense. If it’s not wrong to me and it makes my life better, then I say it is right. And that is what’s true.”

“If that’s what you think, then fine. Good night,” Lane said and then spun around before disappearing into the dark of the night. I continued down the road, step after painful step, inching my way to my parents’ home.

Then, as if your reality launched a counterassault on my progress, I heard the scratching voice of an old friend from school. She spoke on the phone just outside of a house I walked past. Her call seemed casual and innocuous. She and I had been friends for all of our childhood, while we had mostly lost touch she never failed to occasionally comment on my parent’s social media posts or like my own brother’s photos. In fact, her parents and mine had always been the dearest of friends. How rude and crass would I be if I did not approach her to reacquaint myself with an old friend? Even then, as I hobbled along the street clutching at my breast to keep my money in place, I stopped at the edge of her lawn and gave into yet another annoying biological and social need that is baked into your godforsaken reality. It is the same need I just described, the one where I feel as if I would be rude if I did not address that I had seen an old friend in public. It is a ridiculous custom and absolutely mad that I would be compelled to do such a thing, but as I said, your reality had begun to exert something of a force over me, one that I did not have the strength to oppose for much longer. I had to give in, if only somewhat, to keep my spite alive and to keep myself alive. So, I tucked the cash deeper between my breasts, made some last second adjustments to my hair and shirt, and then called to my old friend.

5

“Ella, is that you?” I said into the darkening evening.

“Who’s that?” She asked, lowering her phone.

“It’s me, your old friend from school. What a surprise seeing you out here now?” Really it was not a surprise, seeing as we had lived on the same street my entire childhood. We played together throughout our school days. Often times she would drag me along to birthday parties or social gatherings until the last year of high school when our friendship petered out. I am not certain what caused the petering; however, I recall it being something of her own fault. There must have been some aspect of my reality that she disdained and just could not abide, so she cut me off from it. However, time heals us all and after forgetting our encounters myself, I was certain Ella had as well.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. I think I saw her smiling through the low light of twilight but could not quite make out her facial expression. She quickly brought her phone up to her ear and said, “I’ll have to call you back,” and then hung up.

“Do you still live in this house?” I asked, thinking it must be true. Ella had never done much with her life while in school, she spent most of her time in sports, studying for tests, and taking the classical route to her education, much as I had. I would not have been surprised if Ella did live at home with her parents, however not out of necessity—as was my case—but out of failure to succeed. I lived in my parents’ home because my circumstances necessitated it, if it were not for my illness then I would have lived a fruitful and productive life. One where I could work long, difficult hours to further the work of destroying the oppressors, as I did while working as a human resources representative in that beige building. During that time, I made money sufficient for my means and if I never had to stop, I would now be making far beyond what I needed. With my meager earnings I lived in a communal apartment where six others shared the living space. I still had my own room, of course, but we did share bathrooms and the kitchen. However, it worked well for me, since the seven of us often got together to determine the best ways we could contribute to the dismantling of your reality in favor of our own.

One of my communal living partners, Evan, managed a fast-food chain restaurant. He worked day in and day out to make sure that particular location made as little money as possible. Some days he broke the ice cream machine. Others, he overcooked batches of fries. He once left the freezer open overnight and destroyed a day’s worth of food. Evan’s crowning achievement, however, was when, by his influence, the restaurant closed entirely. Twenty-five employees worked there. All of them seemed relatively happy and content to work their allotted hours and get paid their meager sums, until Evan brought to them the truth. He left out earnings reports and when these people came to Evan, asking for a raise based on the absurd revenue they saw, he would deny it, citing an increase in operating expenses caused by employee lack of care and the profit margins running too thin. However, this left the workers discontented and eventually, as Evan hinted at the idea to them, they decided to unionize. At which point the corporation promptly shut down the restaurant and fired all twenty-five employees. Evan came home that day, prouder than I’d ever seen him. He dismantled that location and cost the corporation millions of dollars. About two weeks later Evan moved back in with his parents. I admired the man for his courage and sought then, a few months after he had moved away, to make my own dent in the reality that despised us.

“No, I don’t. I’m just visiting for the weekend,” Ella said to me.

“Oh, then where do you stay now? Somewhere close by, perhaps with your husband?” I asked. Though she did not live at home, I’m sure she did not live off her own gain. I doubted she was married and hoped at the time my question would cause her embarrassment at having to admit to me she was single.

“No, my husband and I live down South. We own a home close by my law firm,” she answered.

So, she admitted it, her straight and normalized life had led her down the path of law. I could see the tinge of shame in her eyes, even as she tried to hide it from me. She hated being a lawyer and she was embarrassed to admit it to me. The only thing worse than a cop is a lawyer. They’re two sides of the same coin, enforcing and upholding a corrupt system that seeks to oppress the weak. Cops abuse and enslave whoever they please and lawyers do whatever they can to enforce the cops’ abuse. And eventually, lawyers become judges, who fancy themselves dictators over their courtrooms. They lord over whoever enters and determine the fates of innocent and guilty victims alike.

“Oh, well good for you then,” I said.

“And do you live nearby?” She asked, leaning a hand on her hip.

“Yes, I do. Same place. I suffered several injuries since we last met and as I am unable to work. My parents have put me up for the time being, until I find work that I can manage with my injuries and illness.” I adjusted my bosom, careful to keep the cash from displacing.

“I’m sorry to hear that?”

Sorry? She was sorry for me? I lived without care, nor worry, having no obligation nor responsibility. What was there to be sorry for? Oh contraire, for I felt sorry for poor Ella. She slaved away each day stressing over her family and the success of her law firm, while I traversed virtual worlds and roused thousands with my riveting words. Her life imprisoned her behind thick bars of duty. I lived, soaring free from all care, nothing to hold me or keep me from doing anything I pleased, except my injuries and lack of funds.

“No need to be sorry, I live as I can. What brings you to town?” I wanted to scream at her, to tell her all the things I thought, but I had to play nice while I determined what use Ella might have for me in the coming days.

“Oh, Jillian is having a baby, I’m here for the shower tomorrow. I was just talking with her on the phone.” Ella pointed to her phone.

The mention of the name Jillian sent a shiver down my spine. I had not heard of nor thought of that devil’s name in years. This girl would torture me to no end in grade school. From second grade all the way to senior year she tormented my mind with games, insults, and abuse. She of all people had convinced a man to impregnate her? Preposterous. I had to see this for myself, if only to prove that the circumstance was not a lie. For if Jillian could find a man to give her a child, then surely anything in your realty could come to pass.

“I’d be glad to join!” I said, inviting myself along. Despite not having seen these women since high school, I knew that I could impose myself into this shower by simply showing up. If I invited myself now, Ella would have no excuse but to give me the details. Otherwise, she risked failing at this particular social endeavor and that was not something a normal and proper woman could do.

“Oh, well, uh, we weren’t planning on another, but maybe they’d like to catch up with you” Ella reasoned her way into my invitation just as I expected.

“Don’t worry, I’ll bring a gift and pay for my portion of the meal,” I said.

“It is rather expensive, Jillian isn’t paying, after all, it’s a party for her and celebrating her baby, it’s only fair,” Ella said.

“Of course, it’s only fair,” I agreed, but in my head I knew that to be ridiculous. It was anything but fair to expect all the guests to pay for the meal of Jillian Dombrowski. Her family owned more land and businesses than any one single unit of people had need. Their stores of money overran every bank in the city. Suggesting that anyone must pay for the meal of such a well to do princess come from the wealthiest of means was insulting at best and downright malicious at worst.

“So, the meal should be about $100 each, you can pay at the restaurant tomorrow.” Ella obviously hoped the exorbitant price would have me scoff and refuse attendance. However, I could not let something as simple as money stand in the way of my need to see Jillian’s pregnancy in the flesh. Besides that, I had to prove to Ella, and anyone else who would show up at this party, that my life had turned out better than their own. That my own path had been right, more right than theirs and certainly more fruitful, if not in financial gain then in moral and ethical gain.

“Yes, yes I can pay that,” I said, reaching into my breast to fumble for some cash.

“Oh dear,” Ella said putting a hand to her face.

I pulled from my bosom a clump of bills that I counted out to one hundred, “There you are.”

Ella stared at the cash, then at me with a smile, and said, “That’s alright. You can get it to me tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong with this?” I asked holding the money out to her.

“Nothing, I just don’t want to risk losing it. I’ve gotten all scatterbrained since we last met. My husband doesn’t even trust me with the keys to the car. I lose them the second he hands them to me,” Ella said.

“Right,” I said, shoving the money back into my bra, “Where shall we meet then?”

“Harriet’s Don, downtown at six in the evening.”

“I look forward to it, Ella,” I said.

“Ya, me too!” Ella beamed at me and then ran back into the house before I could respond, shutting the door behind her.

Another car drove by the lights washing over me, threatening to reveal my face and hoard of cash now sticking from the low cut of my shirt. I could only hope Ella had not seen my disheveled look and frantic glances to either side of the road. It was dark that night and I could hardly see the details on her own face, so for her to see mine must have been an impossibility, as my eyesight is far more acute than that of anyone I have ever met. I could pick out black numbers on a black surface from twenty yards in a dim light.

As the lights came over me I put my hand to my face to shield it from prying eyes and then hurried down the road at the pace of a giant land snail until finally I came upon my parents’ home; unhindered by police or the thoughts of Ron or Lane violently rushing upon me in the night to inquire about money. The idiots would be so thoughtless to come upon me. However, neither of them accosted me, and I stepped onto the porch of my parents’ home unhindered and unharmed. I let go a breath of relief and pulled the door open. I had been gone for almost two hours at that point and the sun set completely before I even left the gas station. I could hear neither my brother nor his son in the home as I crept up the stairs, trying not to alert my father or mother to my return. They would attempt to scold me and blame me for the outburst my brother caused. I had no more energy to deal with the beratement of my parents and I had a great need to hide my new wealth until I knew what could be done with it. That is when I heard my father’s voice come from the hall.

“Are you finally home now?” He called to me from the kitchen.

I did not answer and continued up the steps.

“I know that’s you. Come in here and chat with me and your mother,” his voice said to me, not a hint of anger or frustration. That meant he was in the worst of moods. He never betrayed his emotion when it boiled over. Instead of yelling he would quietly speak to me with an air of superiority and patriarchal power. Something far worse than the screams and violent thrashes of a man who had lost control. Someone who had resorted to such primitive means of confrontation had lost the fight immediately. Anyone who needs to enforce their reality through violent or physical means has no merit in their reality. No, a reality must be won over through stubborn argument, quiet opposition, and the silencing of voices that would call for—or merely incite through any suggestion of dissent—violence or physical assertion through any means necessary. My father never resorted to violence, he only kept his assertions through mental will and his words of pride.

Only so that I might avoid the inevitable confrontation they would enforce on me in my room I resigned myself to listen to my father and stepped off the stairwell and down the hallway to the living room. I did not immediately approach the living room as I knew my father wanted. Instead, I lingered in the hall, staring at the myriad paintings hanging from the walls. When I finally tore myself away from the horrid paintings I tucked the cash deeper into my bra and took my final step into the living room and found myself confronted, not only by my father, but my mother and brother as well. “What is he doing here?” I asked, pointing to my idiot of a brother.

“I’m here to apologize to you, not that you deserve it. However, dad thinks it will help and so I will. I apologize for antagonizing you,” he said.

“I don’t accept. Can I go now?” I said.

My father sighed and then said, “Not yet, I want to show you something.” He pulled out his phone and then turned on the T.V. to cast his phone screen for everyone to see. On the screen was a webpage advertisement, one I had seen many times, the signup page for the beta of a newly developed neural interface device and what I could only describe as a sort of stasis chamber.

“I know of this. I already tried to get into it. They only chose the family and friends of the developers. Not a single person who signed up for any of the public tests got in,” I said.

“That’s true,” my father said, “But I do know someone from the company and getting into this round was only a matter of money. I purchased a spot, which I will give to you, so long as you can buy the system yourself.”

“Is this not what you wanted honey?” My mother said, “We thought it might make things easier for you and your leg. I know it’s hard to get around and meet people, but with this you’ll be able to do anything without pain.”

“If you really cared about my pain you would buy the system for me,” I said.

“I told you she’d say that,” my brother said.

“Hush.” My father put a hand on my brother’s shoulder.

“I still do not understand why he’s here,” I said.

“Because this is a gift from all of us, the spot wasn’t cheap, and he helped buy it for you. We want you to be happy and this might be the best way for you to get there,” my father said.

“Or do you just want me locked away in a pod for the remainder of my life, so I no longer bother any of you?” I had always known that my family hated me, but they had never been so forthright in expressing it. At least they tried to maintain a facade of love as they tortured me. Not only did they dangle in front of me the thing I most desired in the world, but they also egged me into it from their own selfish desires to be rid of me. I could only assume that they derived some sick pleasure from watching me suffer. They all could have easily paid for the system, yet they chose to place that burden on me solely so they could claim they had done right by me while keeping from me my desire and happiness. They knew very well I could never earn the money on my own. So, while I said that they only wanted to be rid of me, I knew that to not be the case. For what sort of lives would they lead if they did not have me to torture? Every one of them spent all their waking moments attempting to cause me misery. If I was to go and lock myself away in the reality of the metaverse, then truly they would all lose their one reason for living. That is what made my recent acquisition of wealth so sweat. My family expected me to never have the funds and watch as my dreams slipped from my grasp. However, they had overplayed their hand and I would watch them despair as I paid in full for the system that would bring me to the metaverse.

“How much is it?” I asked.

“About five thousand. I know that’ll be hard for you to come by, but I think you’ll be able to do it if you just work hard enough for the next few months. I know you can do it, you’ve done it before,” my father said, speaking in that insolent degrading voice of his. It was so filled with worry and hope; worry that I might actually earn the money and hope that I would fall short of having my prize.

“That’s all? I have that with me now,” I said reaching into my bra, looking to my brother for his reaction.

“What are you doing?” The idiot said as my hands started shoveling cash from my breast onto the floor.

“Paying for the system. It’s all there and then some. Should be $6000,” I said.

“Where did you get that cash?” My mother held a hand to her mouth, no doubt in awe that I would commit such an indecent act in her presence.

“I always have the cash for things I need, it’s just how it is,” I knew that explanation to be terrible, but I did not owe my family an explanation, nor did I owe them money for the system. But I had acquired this cash for the express purpose of finally getting into the metaverse and I was not about to let my desire to spite my parents get in the way of my ascension.

“Well, I didn’t think you’d have it so quickly,” my father said. “I wasn’t planning to order it yet, but I guess I’ll do that tomorrow.” If Ron could give me another six thousand, I would gladly give it all up a thousand times over just to hear and see the disappointment in my father’s tone and face. He had lost and I had won.

6

I spent the next night and day dreading my expected appearance at that awful Jillian Dombrowski’s baby shower. As I already said, she’s the last person that deserved such fanfare and love. Just thinking about having to sit there and support that buffoonery set me into a panic. Fortunately, I had become quite adept at handling panic, as my mind became more and more prone to it over time. I could quell a panic as soon as it started or start it up again just so I could feel the anticipation. The rush of adrenaline that comes from such stress is a primal and disgraceful feeling. It is a relic of a biological past that must be rejected and has no purpose in the metaverse. I would be glad to be rid of it when my system arrived. At the time, however, I had to settle for learning to control my body as I did my reality. So long as you have the will to assert your reality over all others, then nothing can stop you from harnessing the power of panic. Though, you would not long need that power as anyone who has such will to defy realities would find their way to the metaverse in due time, so long as you did not have to pay for an early spot.

In the hours prior to my departure I deliberated long over which outfit I should wear, or whether I should purchase an outfit specifically for the occasion. Certainly, the other women who would attend had all bought clothes just for such an evening, however, I did not have the desire or the means to put in the effort needed to procure new attire. Instead, I slid my hand over my vast wardrobe of over ten shirts and pants pairs, along with five total dresses. I had seen no one else with such a magnificent set of clothing. I truly have the greatest taste of anyone, there is no point in refuting that.

After only three hours of deliberation, hardly a blink of an eye when compared to the time the other women likely spent choosing their own clothes when including the effort they engaged in to purchase them, I decided on the perfect dress to wear. This particular dress would display all my feminine charm and beauty in such a subtle manner that I could outright deny any accusation that I might be attempting to outshine Jillian on her night. Though it would be true, no one would dare even suggest that might be the case. For doing so would be admitting that I was more feminine and more beautiful than the woman they came to support. The dress itself had nothing particularly unique about it, except that it fit my own body in a manner no other article of clothing could. It accentuated the curves and shape of my form in the way shadows give depth to a painting. I would look stunning, and all eyes would be torn from Jillian and placed on me.

I arrived at Harriet Don’s precisely at six in the evening to no welcome or fanfare. That did not matter, my party was inside, not out. So, I called upon the hostess and inquired of the baby shower I had been invited to attend. The daft dolt of a girl claimed to know nothing of a baby shower and pretended to have never heard the name Jillian Dombrowski. Having no other explanation—and knowing no other could possibly assert the truth—I assumed one of the women in the shower had seen me before I came to the restaurant and warned Jillian of my fantastical appearance. Not wanting me to upstage her at her own celebration, she abandoned her plans and moved the party from the restaurant to avoid the embarrassment of it all. I chuckled to myself and requested the idiot hostess to give me a seat alone, near a window that I might enjoy a meal anyway and revel in my victories over my old school mates, who had not even a minuscule amount of respect or dignity to admit their defeat to me. Of course, as is often the case when it comes to losers, they must have been so hurt and so devastated by their loss that the only modicum of power left to them by my victory was to deny me the satisfaction of admitting their defeat to me. Thus I must gain my satisfaction through spite, and spite them I would by dining still and enjoying my own company.

It is a wonderful thing to enjoy your own company, for truly there is no one who can provide to you such a uniquely understanding perspective. Yet another boon the metaverse would provide over your reality is the ability to fill a room with just yourself and then spend a whole evening—or perhaps longer, a whole day, weeks even—with yourself. When I sat at my table, I first thought of my parents, as I used to routinely do before I left them behind and how I had beaten my father at his game. I knew they wanted me to suffer with my greatest desire out of reach, but, because of my craftiness and my worthiness, I bested my father and procured the money needed for my metaverse pod. This machine would allow me to plug right into the metaverse, fully and completely. No longer would I need to take myself away from my virtual worlds to relieve myself, to eat, or to sleep. The metaverse would free me from biology and allow me to live far beyond the confines of your pitiful reality. My thoughts drifted toward the hope of finally finding the world where I belonged, because I certainly did not belong in yours. You and everyone I had the displeasure of knowing made that clear.

“So that’s what you were planning,” Lane’s voice penetrated my meditation.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, not surprised he had shown up. The man had a propensity for interrupting me in the least opportune moments.

“I come here to be alone sometimes, but when I saw you I just thought it to be more than a coincidence. I feel like we’ve become something of friends in the past year,” Lane said.

“I think you mistake my lack of expressed hatred as acceptance of friendship.” I took a sip of water. Lane sat at my table.

“Well, that lack of expression must be how you are as a friend. I’m willing to accept that.” Lane smiled at me. A big stupid smile that still fills me with irrational contempt when I think of it.

“You’re not very smart are you?”

“Perhaps not emotionally smart, but I like to think I can hold my own in a conversation.”

“One with an oaf, I’m sure.”

“You must be kinder to yourself,” Lane snickered under his breath.

“Do you amuse yourself?” I asked.

“Occasionally, I do. So what are you planning? I think I might know, but I’d like to hear it from you.” Though Lane irritated me without fail, I found it somewhat pleasurable to speak with him. He could not contend with me, not in the slightest, but having an actual person to speak with as I rambled on my path to the metaverse disquieted some of my fears. Despite his efforts to dissuade me of my decisions, his insistence I not make them only confirmed to me the rightness of my beliefs.

“I was planning to have dinner alone, in peace.”

“And you think that you cannot have peace while I am with you?”

“That is precisely true.”

“Beyond that, what are you planning? Did you give the money back?”

“You know the answer to that question. Do you think I’d be here if I did?”

“So, Ron has the pleasure of paying directly for your lavish life. You really did deserve that over him.”

“I haven’t used a dime of that money to eat here, nor will I. I can only now afford to eat here because some of my additional funds have covered other obligations.” I looked around for the waiter, hoping to order something more than a glass of water.

“Yes, because that is completely different. At least it’s not the exact same cash that is paying for you meal. Then you do have something of an idea of decency.” Lane leaned back in his chair, thinking he had won a sort of mini victory.

“More of an idea than the man stalking a woman and inviting himself to conversation with her despite her repeated protestations.” I finally caught the eye of a waiter. “Can I get a bottle of wine, please? I don’t care what kind, just bring me the cheapest you have.” The waiter nodded and left my crowded table.

“At least you’re being frugal. You’ve yet to tell me why you’re here.” Lane circled his finger around the empty plate in front of him.

“I was invited to a baby shower that has since been cancelled.”

“They didn’t tell you it was cancelled, did they?”

“More likely they did not want to reveal their inadequacies to me as they pined over a pregnant woman who’s done nothing with her life except reproduce. I had planned to make them well aware of their uselessness. Someone needs to. I have to say I’m a bit disappointed at their cancelling, I looked forward to stripping them of their pride.”

“That sounds like a pleasant evening,” Lane said.

“You’re sarcasm is unbearable, and I’ve had quite enough of it.”

“Sorry, it’s a bad habit I’m trying to break.” Lane looked down, actually disappointed in himself.

“You think me terrible for wanting to ruin what should be a nice night for some women?”

“Depends on who the women are,” Lane answered.

“The absolute bottom of the sludge heap.”

“Even still, do these women truly deserve this treatment from you?”

“Yes, they’ve not once in their lives held back from treating me worse. I only planned to show them just how ineffectual their bullying had been on me. They wanted to see me give up and fail. They thought me incapable of succeeding. I only sought to prove them the opposite of me and the same of them. It’s only fair that those who treated me with such vitriol be reprimanded for their evils. I think that to be rather merciful, considering the possible punishments they could receive.” The waiter had returned during my small monologue and placed two glasses on the table, filling them both from the bottle he left behind. I sipped from my glass; Lane did not touch the second glass.

“I don’t know to what extent these women wronged you, but certainly living your life free from them and leaving them in their own hatred would be better than trying to prove to them anything?”

“Where is the pleasure in that?”

Lane thought for a moment and then said, “Not pleasure, but peace.”

“Peace is an impossibility in this hell of a reality. We can only seek pleasure from enforcing what little control we have over our own piece of it.”

“Do you plan to live long?”

“What kind of stupid question is that?”

“A very stupid one, I suppose. I should be going now; I have other obligations this night. As always, it’s been a pleasure.”

“Perhaps for you,” I sipped at my wine glass and watched Lane until he vanished behind a corner. I then sat for some time lost in a stupor of dreams, glad to finally have a moment to myself to ponder the things Lane and I had spoken about. Then I heard the voice of a woman I recognized instantly. The sound grated on my ears and took my focus from my own thoughts and demanded I listen only to that voice. It was the same voice that would screech at me some rehearsed and tired greeting as I walked by her cubicle every morning.

“Looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays,” she would say. And I would smile, or fake chuckle, and then move on.

The next day she would continue her assault on my psyche, “Another day another dollar!”

Then the next, “Happy hump day!”

And the next, “One day down only one left to go!”

And finally, “TGIF, Thank God it’s Friday!”

Only for her to repeat the same five phrases on the same days, every week for the entirety of the time I worked in that hell hole.

I turned toward that awful voice and saw the bane of my peace. Adelaide Howard, the tall-haired, stubby, rosy cheeked, bright-eyed, floral wearing, ball of enthusiasm and hellish glee. We locked eyes for a single moment and that is all it took.

“Well, I never!” She shouted from across the restaurant, pointing at me. I turned back to my table, ignoring the outburst from Adelaide hoping she would take the hint. Which, of course, was a fool’s hope. That is another horrible thing about your reality. You cannot turn other people off. In the metaverse I would soon enter, if anyone bothered, you simply turned them off and never must you deal with their insolence again. They would be none the wiser that you have dismissed them, in fact they would probably be glad of it. For the analogue the metaverse creates in place of yourself to appease the needs of the irritant will be more friendly, more kind, and a better listener than you ever could; because the metaverse has infinite patience and infinite good will for all who choose to live in its bounds. None are denied pleasure and self-fulfillment, no matter how annoying they are.

I pretended not to notice her, effectively attempting to turn her off, but despite my uncanny grasp on controlling reality, Adelaide burst through my veil of ignorance. She slapped a tiny hand onto my table, shaking my second glass of wine.

“Is it really you?” She asked, looking me up and down, pausing briefly at my breast line.

I sighed and stopped trying to turn her off, “Yes, Adelaide, it’s me.” What a stupid question she asked. Of course it was me. Who else could I possibly be?

“Oh my goodness! How long has it been?” She said, pulling a chair out to sit at my table.

“No that’s okay, you don’t have to sit. I don’t want to keep you from your dinner.”

“Nonsense, darling, we’d be happy to join you. I’m sure you have plenty of juice to spill to us with the all the time you’ve been gone. The girls would be happy to know what you’ve been up to. You have been up to some interesting things, haven’t you?” Adelaide kept her eyes on my breasts. She never liked me. I knew that herself awarded invitation to my table was a game designed to vex. If anyone I have known came close to besting me in my game of spitefulness, it was Adelaide.

“I suppose you could say that,” I said, keeping my eyes on my glass of water. As I reached for a drink three other women approached my table and barreled into my moment alone as forcefully as Adelaide. I knew the women from my time working in that beige box. Each of them had seen my breast enhancement and scoffed. Naturally they were jealous of them. All the men lusted after me when I got them and gave these four no more mind. Me leaving the employ of that horrible place gave them inexorable pleasure. And at that moment they surrounded me on all sides, seeking to trap me into their pack and toy with their prey before dealing a killing blow.

“Girls, you remember her don’t you? She was just telling me all about the many interesting things she’s been doing in her time away from the office.” Adelaide commanded the attention of each of the other women with a ferocious zeal. They had chattered and whispered to each other, devising their plans amongst themselves on how to deal with me. Yet, once Adelaide spoke, all of them quieted, not even daring to let out a breath for fear of interrupting their leader.

“Was I?” I said, pushing back on Adelaide’s attack. She was unfazed.

“Yes, you mentioned something about it just before the girls arrived. Don’t let them interrupt you now,” Adelaide said as she waved at a waiter walking by the table. “We’re going to sit here now, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all ma’am,” the waiter said.

“What sorts of interesting things are you all interested in from me?” I said wanting Adelaide to lead the conversation. I do not know what she wanted, but I knew her goal was to embarrass me. Of course, that would not happen, and I would come out the victor—so long as I played the game carefully.

“Oh you know, romance, careers, or family. Anything like that that’s changed since you left the office. We’d all love to know,” Adelaide said. The other girls nodded. I wish I could say I remembered their names, I always try to remember the names of everyone I meet, so as to give them the dignity of having someone who will always remember them. Also, so that if the need arises I might spite them. It is difficult to cast spite onto those you do not have an intimate connection with. I have always found it much easier to deliver the devastating blows of a well-crafted plot if the receiver of my plot is an acquaintance. However, these three particular women had nothing even remotely consequential about them I could remember. They lacked all individualism and personality, so much so that even as I try to recall their faces all I see is slight variations of Adelaide Howard repeated three times. Though, I do remember the general shape of their bodies. One was particularly tall and treeish, one squat and round like a bean, and the third lithe and square.

“Yes, we’d love to know!” Each of the three other women echoed in the same tone and pitch of voice as Adelaide. This sort of phenomenon is not uncommon in your reality. There are vessels of flesh that seem to lack the intellect or the intelligence to form an identity separate from one another. They act as parasites that cling to an idea, a religion, politics, or another person. Once they find their host they model everything about themselves surrounding this idea and refuse to let anything contrary to their cloning manifest itself and tear their empty vessel away to be filled with its own identity and its own intelligence. These are the sorts of people that I hate most of all. For it is impossible to spite them. The three women in front of me in particular had no thoughts capable of manifesting negativity toward another without first gaining permission from their host. So, in order to spite one of the three in particular I would need to do so to Adelaide first, which, in turn, would spite all four. Even if I had no qualms with spiting so many at one time, I prefer a more surgical method. One where I can pull at the strings of another based on their own individual frustrations. However, it was impossible for me to garner a satisfying reaction from one of the three women individually. Leaving me to contend with Adelaide, who, as I said, was worthy of contention. Normally I could whither another down by attacking those close to them, as I do with my father and brother. However, my only target could be Adelaide and she knew it. She carried around her acolytes as a means of defense from the world she accepted. With them she controlled her reality and made me jealous for it.

“Well, as you know, the doctors told me my health was failing me ever since I took that fall. The one on my last day. Do you remember? I got up and left the hospital after only two days. Despite those idiot doctors trying to tell me I’d never walk again. I haven’t taken a word they say seriously since and I’m just as healthy as I’ve ever been.” I looked at Adelaide, paying no attention to the other girls.

“Oh yes, I do remember that day. I watched you take two steps up those small stairs and then topple down them again like a rag doll. Your blouse fell right off, and your skirt turned outside in. I’m sure everyone that day got quite the look at everything good you had to offer them.” Adelaide pried into me with her eyes, this time locking onto my own gaze and boring into me.

“I do too! If you weren’t hurt so bad I might have laughed,” Tree Adelaide said.

“You wouldn’t mind if we laughed now, would you? Seeing as you’ve turned out okay,” Bean Adelaide asked.

I suppressed a scowl, revealing any dissatisfaction at the request or embarrassment would lose me the battle, instead I gave the four woman a dainty smile. “Yes you can laugh all you want. I don’t mind. I remember the day fondly. It was the very same day I got to leave my life as a wage slave behind and start making my own way on my own terms, working only for my own dreams and not those of another in the name of financial security. If only we had more people willing to take the step into the dark, then perhaps they might be more content in their circumstances. However, I also seem to recall that day my fall made quite the impression on James Farad? He’s the one that made me decent, came with me in the ambulance, and then stayed with me while I made my recovery. Adelaide, I can’t quite remember how the two of you knew each other? You went on a few dates, correct?”

“Three dates, to be precise. Each one worse than the last. The stupid man wanted nothing more than to sneak a peek or wet his willy. I set him straight that third date and not soon after he went hunting where he couldn’t fail. He ended up doting on you not two days later when you fell. Poor boy couldn’t even get it right when the kill is handed to him on a platter,” Adelaide said.

“Are you all ready to order?” The waiter stopped at our table and looked at each one of us in turn. Each of the Adelaides ordered some sort of salad and together agreed on a second bottle of wine for the table. I refrained from rolling my eyes and instead followed their lead. I had to remain on the same battlefield and the more Adelaide believed she had begun to subdue me the better. Once she dropped her guard I would pounce and rip her throat from her neck.

“I thought you couldn’t eat dairy ever since your, um, corrective surgery,” Adelaide gestured at my chest.

“That was only temporary, once I left the hospital after my fall I’ve been fine eating anything I’ve wanted. Those doctors know nothing more about me than their charts can tell them. I know what my body can and can’t have. Dairy isn’t something that harms me,” I said. The waiter quietly set down three more glasses and filled them with the new wine bottle.

“Certainly there’s wisdom in listening to the doctors, especially in a case that might be as serious as yours?”

“No, there isn’t.”

“Well, I suppose we can’t all have been as learned as you are. Since I’ve been married and had a child I just can’t find the time to read through medical journals and philosophy texts. Instead I just pay the doctor what he’s owed, and my health has never been better. But not everyone can afford to just let someone else be the expert can we?” Adelaide sipped her glass of wine.

Square Adelaide giggled and then said, “Adelaide! You said we came here to enjoy food with friends. She’s our friend as much as the rest of us. That means she can afford the best medical care, I’m sure. If she thinks they’re idiots, then they’re probably idiots. Look at her! She’s up and about, eating here with us, and speaking without issue. Seems to me her expertise has far outpaced that of a doctor that has spent over eight years learning and honing his knowledge. Her quick internet searches and perusal of articles have done just fine for her.”

“It’s far more than just quick internet searches. I’ve spent just as much time, if not more, learning about everything, not just medical science, as the doctors have spent on their own worthless degrees. I may not have the debt and the paper to prove my knowledge and expertise, but I have it regardless. Even if I didn’t, I’ve spent thirty years learning about myself and my body. I know it better than any doctor ever could, so for them to claim something about it I don’t know is insulting at best.” I took a sip of my own wine glass and held back a look of disgust. Adelaide must have seen the change in my expression and then finished her own glass in a single prolonged sip.

“Calm down now, no one here is disparaging your own self-diagnosis. If anything we’re just concerned about your health. I mean, you did take quite the nasty fall and never returned to work. We haven’t heard from or of you in more than a year. It’s not surprising we assumed the worst. Not to mention how you look to us now. Dear, come with me to the bathroom, I can help reapply some of your makeup. I’m sure you just missed some details while making your own way. It has to be a busy life,” Adelaide smiled and waved toward the waiter. He stopped at the table and Adelaide asked for another bottle of wine, to which the waiter responded by disappearing and then reappearing with a fresh bottle, all in a matter of a minute.

I watched the exchange and kept to my thoughts as I pondered the best way to respond to Adelaide. So far she had proven worthy in answering my challenges. Her murder of crows only worked to reinforce her insults. I am ashamed to admit at that time I was not as practiced in spiting my opponents as I am now. The metaverse has allowed me to sharpen my skills and my insight into the minds of those I contend with. Adelaide, however, had ten years more experience than I had. She answered every attempt of mine with an attack that forced me to defend. So long as I needed to defend myself I would never gain the upper hand. I needed to go full on the attack and let my own pride fall away, even if it meant letting Adelaide win the embarrassment she so desperately sought from me. At the very least I would make her drop her facade and her underlings would see her for her true self. Then, perhaps, they could begin their own journey of self-development.

Adelaide sat smirking in herself assessed victory, chatting among her clones as the waiter served all five of us the same salad. I could not let her last statement go unanswered, however, I needed to have the perfect response, one that would so utterly devastate her that it would make up for the time between her statements and my own. The four women continued to chat and pick slowly at their salads as I mulled over my possible responses, ignoring my own food. I could comment on her appearance, but that would not demonstrate wit. It had to be an attack on all of her at once, all of them at once. Perhaps comparing them to ants or another hive-minded creature could cut them down? Only, that would complement Adelaide’s power over her drones more than insult them. No, my response had to dig further. It had to tear her down so fully she could do nothing but sit in stunned silence and awe. I would force her to admit defeat and humiliate her. I only had to think of how.

The four women continued to talk as the evening gave way to night and the orange glow of twilight faded from the decorated windows behind Adelaide’s chair. They seemed content to ignore me as I pondered upon the words I might deliver to Adelaide. Bottles of wine passed as freely as the hours. With each glass that was poured to me my thoughts slurred and slowed. I began the night with a quick wit and silver tongue, but Adelaide and her drones had succeeded in intoxicating me to the point of silence. Even as I sipped on my fifth glass of wine, a waiter dropped yet another bottle into the center of the table and removed the old. He asked if we might want to order desert, not for the first or last time, to which Adelaide declined. The women spoke to each other of nonsense and unimportant gossip. Who in the office had suffered a recent embarrassment? Or who was in dire financial straits? No matter how innocuous the topic, the women treated it with the same regard that generals might treat valuable intelligence at the war table. Each item of gossip was an important weapon to add to Adelaide’s arsenal, something she could later use to bend another to her will and perhaps use to recruit more soldiers. She did not care that I heard or saw this strategy of hers. In fact, it seemed to me she wanted me to see it all. She was bragging of a victory she supposed she had over me. By showing her tactics and revealing her supply lines, she showed to me her complete lack of respect for me and my ability. Time had run thin and each passing minute weighed on me, making my response all the more important. Then the waiter dropped the check at the table.

“Oh, we aren’t all together, that one is separate. Thank you,” Adelaide said pointing to me.

“I’m terribly sorry ma’am, I will get that corrected immediately,” the waiter said, pulling the check from the table.

“You are fine to pay for your own meal, aren’t you?” She looked right at me for the first time in three hours. I met her eyes and nodded, not yet ready to speak to her. I had almost finished crafting my perfect attack; I only needed more time. When the check came I fumbled around in my purse for my wallet and made as much of a show about not finding any cash, card, or check anywhere on my person. I looked up at the waiter, who stood patiently holding the check from Adelaide’s squad. He sighed and left without my money. Adelaide smirked.

“Is everything okay?” She asked.

I didn’t yet want to respond, I couldn’t. My next words had to be devastating, they had to be crushing, they had to destroy Adelaide and her hold over her followers. I nodded and continued to search through my purse, putting the final touches on my statements. Though, they weren’t yet perfect. I needed only a few more minutes. The waiter came back to the table and returned to Adelaide her credit card and then stared at me. I responded by pulling free my wallet and slipping my dad’s credit card into the check book.

“Well, it was wonderful catching up with you! I think we better be going now. Ladies?”

They could not leave, not yet. Adelaide had spent the whole time I knew her lording her charisma and popularity over me. Each day the man would hold the door for her and not me. Each day the office would laugh at her mundane and idiotic greetings. Her drones followed her around and parroted her ideas, enforcing each word with an iron defense. Even if she was wrong—which was often—she could not admit it. She refused. And no one would question because the women surrounding her would support her. This fact of your reality is quite disturbing. It is one of the more disturbing aspects of your world than most others. One I have failed to bring up until now, for my own reasons. Mostly because it is not usually something worth talking about. However, it is one of those things that most do not question. They simple accept it and move on. Also, I do not bring it up for fear that it may be a point of agreement between myself and those I hate so dearly. In your reality—and for this discussion I will play by your rules since outside of your reality this phenomenon cannot occur—facts are often not determined by objectivity. Yes, the objectivity you so love to profess and claim.

Remember, I was once like you. My reality meshed with yours. I accepted that. It was not until I realized that lies could bend reality and cut through its fabric easier than the truth, that I rejected your reality. People have always been more willing to accept a lie if it is more pleasant to hear. Lies keep your reality intact. It relies on them to keep people content and happy within their burdens and misery. If all your reality had was truth, I do not believe many people would resist the metaverse, if at all. Facts, in your reality, are not determined by objectivity—as you might claim—instead they are determined by consensus and time. Regardless of claims of veracity, so long as the majority accepts a supposed fact as true, anything can be fact in your reality. Even after someone would categorically prove something false, people will not care and will not believe it simply because it defies what they already believe to be true. Truth is determined by how many people believe a claim and on what claim one heard first. Of all Adelaide’s evils, her ability to exploit this trait of your reality was above all the worst. With her posse she could assault truth and reality almost as well as the metaverse itself. So long as a person has a following, your reality is theirs to mold.

When I looked up from my contemplation I saw the women had already left the restaurant. I grabbed my father’s card and hurried after them. Just outside I caught Adelaide by the sleeve, panting from my sprint. She turned to face me.

“Yes? Did you have something else you wanted to say?” Adelaide said.

“Yes, I do,” I said. A car pulled up to the curb in front of us and stopped.

“Oh, I’m sorry, dear, but our car just arrived. We’re heading downtown to meetup with some more friends. I do hope we can do this again.” Adelaide patted my arm and then stepped into the car.

“Wait! I haven’t finished talking with you!” I almost shouted.

“You had all night to talk with us, but you hadn’t said a word. Forgive me if I thought you would rather stew in loneliness than reminisce with old friends,” Adelaide said and then closed the door before I could respond.

“I’m not stewing in loneliness, I’m deep in thought unraveling reality as I see fit! Can’t you see how pointless it all is?” I shouted after the car as it drove off, certain that Adelaide could still hear me. Even as it sped away I ran after it as best I could, shouting all the way. “Can’t you see? All of it is stupid and worthless. Just like you and your efforts to embarrass me. Well, Miss Adelaide, you can’t embarrass me because I’m content with who I am and where I am. I don’t need you or your drones to approve of me. I approve of me and I’m defying reality even as we speak. You might pity me, but you are wrong to pity. I pity you. You live a smug, narcissistic existence, always guarded by those who would not dare defy you. While I live in humility, in the lowliness of dissent and disagreement. I seek to find defiance so that I might quell it and bring them in line with good, tolerance, and love. What do you do? You hide from defiance and are content with living in a world of hatred and intolerance. Shame on you for wasting your potential to do good. Shame…” The car had gone now, turned down some street toward downtown. It is not often that I had been defeated, nor that I would admit defeat, but that was it. The last time I remember, perhaps even the first. Adelaide Howard crushed me that day and showed me without a doubt that I had no real place in your reality. If I, who had trained all my adult life in spitefulness, could not spite this single woman then what business did I have living on in a world that scorned me so?

7

I must admit that throughout my story I have been rather narcissistic. Never do I lose my battles when I retell them and never do I look the fool. Not only because I retell them in full honesty—I do, truly—but because it is necessary for me to present myself as clever, cunning, and correct. So, it comes to me with great difficulty to admit my shameful defeat at the hands of Adelaide. Of course, if I faced her today, she would wither away at my first response. I relived the embarrassment of that night every day. Each time I would practice my response. I would be faster, wittier, smarter, and shut down every bit of dissension. Of all the power I have over my own reality one thing I could not do was rid myself of the shame of my past, at least not on my own.

Still, after I screamed into the street—Adelaide’s car had long turned the corner out of sight—I slumped onto the curb and held my head between my hands. That one small battle had been lost, but the war was far from ended. I could still defeat Adelaide; my fight was not yet over. I could still find her and confront her. In the fresh memory of Adelaide slamming the door on me I could recall the faint words of Tree Adelaide speaking to the driver of the car. She told him to go downtown to a place called “the hole”, specifically. As far as I knew no holes had been dug downtown and neither had any natural disasters caused a hole to appear. So, I could easily conclude that “the hole” was not a hole, but a place named as such. To find them I simply needed to call my own driver and then tell him to go downtown to “the hole.”

Perhaps it was the cool night air or even the short time I had to renew my resolve in crushing Adelaide beneath the weight and power of my spite, but I felt refreshed and rejuvenated. I called the car and waited in silence, sitting on the curb, for it to arrive. Though I made no sound, the faculties of my mind roared with activity. Repeatedly, I relived the moment in which Adelaide first came up to my table. She would saunter over, her head held high and then retreat away in absolute defeat.

“Is it really you?” The provocateur I created would say.

“Yes, Adelaide, it is me and you know it’s me. You’ve known since I walked in and sat down. And you’ve spent the last thirty minutes or so planning exactly how you would come up to me and speak. Well, Adelaide, I don’t want you to speak, nor do I want to speak to you. Now, if you please, leave me be so that I may enjoy myself, alone.” My response played perfectly in my mind as I rehearsed it back to the imaginary Adelaide, over and over again. She would huff, her face red and eyes glowering, and then storm away in anger. It was only then that I realized the only way to truly spite Adelaide was to never give her a chance to attack. My fatal flaw was to take her head on in a duel when I should have denied the duel all together and simply poisoned her food and watched her writhe in agony from afar.

Knowing that, my plan changed. I would still go to the hole, but I would not speak with Adelaide or any of her associates. Instead of approaching her and berating her for her lack of respect, I would ignore her. I smiled at the thought of how utterly distraught and devastated the poor woman would be after I showed her how unaffected I was by her attempted embarrassment. The first battle was lost; however, I could win the next and every battle after.

The car pulled to the curb and stopped in front of me. When I opened the door, a short burly man greeted me with a frown and a grunt. I do not know when this happened, but over the last years before I entered the metaverse car service drivers had become mean. They used to do everything to cater toward getting high ratings, then something changed. It was not often that I used a driving service, but occasionally I needed to get around the city and I had no car of my own. I could not afford one and typically I was fine walking when the weather was nice—which was not often, but often enough that I could get out of the house once or twice during the spring and fall. Still, I always preferred my heated or air-conditioned rooms. Some might condemn me for such unabashed use of energy, but I did not live in that reality, so I did not maintain some façade that I cared at all about its existence. While I often used public discourse and certain topics of socially agreed upon taboo to target and spite people for the means of my own entertainment and expression of power, I did not often find myself actually agreeing or believing those things. Some of them were patently insane. As an example, the idea that I, for myself specifically, should give up my own comfort and well-being for the sake of saving a few watts or pounds of carbon exhaust made me laugh. What could be more important than my comfort and life? What else did I even have to live for? That is not to say I refrained from criticizing those who did, much like myself, use excessive energy to live in comfort. However, I did not do so to push ideology. I did so to spite.

“Excuse me,” I said to the gruff man as he locked the doors and started pulling away from the curb.

“Ya?” he said. He looked at me in the rear-view mirror and scowled.

“Are you okay with taking me to a different place than I put on the app?” I pointed to my phone.

“Depends.”

I waited for him to continue but he kept his eyes on the road. “Can you take me to a place called the hole?”

“The what?” the driver raised an eyebrow.

“The hole.”

“What the hell you talking about?”

The driver acted toward me in such an uncouth manner I almost exploded on him, but he did drive the car and while I loved to spite, I had fast learned in my youth that spiting those who hold your immediate safety in their hands is not advisable. It only took one time for me to learn that fact when my father drove us home from a trip to get some ice cream. Not often did he take me on these trips, but I suppose his fatherly instinct overcame his desire to scorn me. He drove the car in much the same way that gruff driver did, calm, attentive, and with an ever-present irritation at the existence of other drivers.

I looked at my dad, holding out my ice cream, and said, “I don’t like this.”

“You don’t like what, dear?” he said to me, giving me much the same scowl as the driver did to me when I asked my question.

“This,” I said again wiggling the ice cream, the top scoop must have looked precariously close to falling because my father’s wide-eyed reaction was beyond ridiculous if the ice cream had not presented a danger to his pristine car upholstery; manicured with years of accumulated salt, oil, and food crumbs.

“Stop playing with your cone, you’ll drop your ice cream.” That is all he said to my expression of dissatisfaction.

“But I don’t like it!” I yelled.

“You wanted mint chip. I told you you wouldn’t want it.”

“Well, I don’t want it. I want a new one.”

“No, you’re getting that one. Eat it or hold it until we get home, and you can throw it away.” My father’s eyes darted back and forth between the road and the mirror to watch me. I continued to wave the ice cream back and forth.

“But I don’t want to eat it.”

“Then throw it away.”

“I don’t want to throw it away. That’s a waste.”

“Then eat it.”

“I don’t want to!” I said and threw the cone at the windshield. Ice cream splattered across the glass and blocked a small part of my father’s view of the road. He swerved to the right and hit the brakes, but he could not see the car merging into the lane next him right as he pulled to the right. The cars collided and I, who always despised wearing seat belts—and still do—was flung forward into my father’s chair. I spent a day in the hospital recovering from a minor head injury and a broken arm. It was an easy lesson to remember. Do not spite those who hold your immediate safety in their hands.

I looked into the rear-view mirror at the driver and said, “The hole, it’s a bar downtown. I had you driving me downtown anyway. I would just like to go there instead.”

“What the hell is the hole?” the driver asked.

I returned his scowl with equal fervor, “I thought you would know.”

“I don’t. Guess you’ll just have to find it yourself.”

“If I don’t know where it is I won’t be able to find it myself. There is no place called the hole.”

“Maybe you’re looking for a place that ain’t there.”

“It’s there.”

The driver raised an eyebrow and took his eyes off the road for a moment. He looked at me with the same look everyone gave me. That look of incredulous disbelief and hatred. Everyone could see how I transcended them into a reality they could not control, and they hated me for it. They refused to believe it. I must have given off some sort of aura or distinctness that others could detect. People could see my greatness and did nothing more than envy me for it.

“Whatever, I’ll just drop you off and you can deal with it.” He continued to stare at me, taking only side glances to the somewhat empty road.

“If you’re waiting for a thank you, you won’t get one. You’re doing your job, even if a subpar one.”

“Nope, just taking you in. Why’s your chest so big? Do you have a tumor or something?”

At anyone else I might have been angry, but I could tell this man had no instinct for intelligence and could no more discern a rat from a mouse. He was an idiot, to put it honestly. However, that was the first time anyone had ever straightforward asked me about my chest. Everyone usually just stared and then pretended they had not. This man stared and then acknowledged it, despite it being disastrously rude and inconsiderate. In a way, I found myself respecting that man. He lived in his own reality just as I and because of that he refused to play by the rules of social interactions. Questions burned in his mind, and he would let nothing stop him from asking. Even if his questions were mundane and shallow. He still had them.

“Those are my breasts,” I said.

“If those are breasts then my leg’s a dick,” he said, chuckling.

“That’s stupid. Are you an idiot?”

“Maybe, have been told that a time or two.”

“Why do you want to know?” I leaned forward, seeing if he would adjust his gaze to my shirt’s neckline. He kept looking at the bulk of my breasts and not the cleavage. By that I could assume his question was not sexual in nature, but merely curious.

“I don’t much like you. Not my type, just curious is all. Haven’t ever seen them that big. What happened?”

“Nothing happened. I had to prove a point, so I did.”

The man started laughing, the car veered to the left until the sound of the wheels bumping over the reflectors made the driver pull the steering wheel to the right. “Sorry about that,” he said, “just never heard of someone do something so big just to prove a point. You mean those ain’t real?”

“They’re real enough,” I said.

“No, I mean you had them put on.”

I sighed, the man was simple, “Yes, I had them altered.”

“Just to prove a point? What point?”

“There was a man who wouldn’t hold a door open for me, so I made him.”

The man laughed again but kept his attention on the road. “No way I believe that.”

“Don’t care if you believe it, it’s true,” I sat back into my seat and looked out the window. We were almost downtown, and I hoped we would get there soon. This man had nothing interesting to say and his questions annoyed me.

“Okay, say I do believe that. You got your breasts so big that this man opened a door for you?”

“Yes, and then I told him exactly what he could do with the door when he finally did.”

He continued to laugh, “The balls on you. That might be the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard. But you said it happened, can’t tell you it didn’t.”

At that point I could not tell if the man was impressed or just making fun of me. I hoped he had been praising me because no one had ever been impressed by my dedication to spite. If he did praise me that would be a gentle affirmation of my pride after the disastrous encounter with Adelaide. I let a small smirk grace my lips as I thought that this man, despite his simplicity, would find my exploits courageous.

“Here’s your stop,” the man said almost with enthusiasm as the car pulled over in front of a small brick building. He said nothing else and stared at me with simple, undiscerning eyes.

“That’s it?” I said.

“What’d you mean that’s it? I drove you to your stop and now you get out of my car.” The driver turned around in his seat and stared at me with the same hateful eyes my father wore. He had not been praising me. He had been insulting me. I thought I might speak, to set the man straight, but it was likely not something he would even understand. However, I could not help myself in that moment. The prey was too easy to catch and after having lost earlier I needed the win.

“I’ll be glad to get out of your car, it smells frankly, but a man should open the door for a woman. I let it go when you picked me up because certainly, I thought you might know where the hole is, but you don’t so you owe me some respect.” He did owe me respect and after the boorish attitude he gave to me I owed him none.

“I do open doors for ladies,” the man said.

He looked like he would continue, but I cut him off, “Then you should open mine.”

“When I see them,” the man finished anyway. “I don’t know what you are. Perhaps at one point you were a lady, I don’t know, but now? Maybe something happened to make you so impolite, and you have your reasons, but I have mine too. You can open your own damn door.”

He broke and I had won. He let his emotions pour from his mouth like a dog. He had no control and all it took was tiny bit of prodding. I yearned for more, perhaps even so much so that he might go so far as to throw me out of his car himself. That would prove it. That would prove the man had nothing but hatred and contempt for me. He never cared or was impressed. All he wanted to do was laugh, so I would break him for it. He would commit evil against me and suffer for it when I cried foul against him.

“I would open my own damn door if I had one, but seeing as this is your car that would make these doors yours as well. So, we agree there. I would like to open my own door, but I do not have a door to open.”

The man lifted an eyebrow and turned to face forward. He clenched the driver’s wheel for a moment and then relaxed. “I don’t know what game you’re trying to play, lady, but please get out. I have another pick up.”

“If you think I am a lady then you can open my door. It’s the least you can do after not knowing where to take me and for so rudely insisting on prying in my own personal matters.”

The man sighed and then opened his own door. He slammed it shut and immediately the door next to me flew open with a furious speed. The driver stared at me, those same ferocious eyes that filled my father the moment the car crashed. He cared more for the damage done to the car and for punishing my ice cream choice than he did for my safety. I made him pay for his hatred; I still do. This man would be no different. Then the eyes faded into indifference.

“Have a good night ma’am,” the driver said holding the door for me.

I stared at him for a moment and then stepped out of the car. “Thank you. You are a true gentleman.” The man grunted and then slammed the door shut before scrambling into his car and speeding away.

8

I stood on the sidewalk, feeling less than satisfied at my victory over the man. Yet again my exploits had resulted in my victim fleeing before they admitted true defeat. For not the first time I thought that I might never receive the satisfaction due to me. The night carried on into darkness as I limped through the somewhat busy streets of downtown, searching for the hole. However, I am not quite sure why I did keep searching for that wretched place. Each passing moment brought closer the realization I would never reach contentment and satisfaction. Each interaction in the last weeks left me feeling dissatisfied and empty, coming to a head that night with Adelaide and then with the car driver.

Adelaide presented to me a reality I had not needed to face since my accident, the reality of my vulnerability. I thought of myself as the arbiter of spite and a molder of reality, though increasingly that delusion broke down the more time I spent outside my safe spaces. Adelaide had beaten me and then I wandered after her, no different than any of her drones, to seek her approval that I might be welcomed into her fold and await yet another opportunity to defeat her—an opportunity I knew would not come. To continue to think that I could lord over your reality and contend with it while people like Adelaide wielded such a power over it—while I faltered without my screens and virtual systems—would betray my very own sense of reality at its core.

There are many things that can be attributed to the subjective nature of human existence, and of those things I would never think to give ground that they are nothing more than mere machinations of society, however there are just as many, if not more, things that can only be attributed to objectivity. Gravity being one such example. No matter how I try, spite, or cry I can never overcome gravity. True, there are those who saw our ground-locked lives in the past and then overcame them through innovation and invention, seemingly breaking the bonds of reality and molding it to their vision. However, those people have not broken objectivity, they have only improved upon the methods with which objectivity would let them bend possibilities. There is nothing anyone can do against objective facts and there is everything anyone can do against subjective reality.

Realizing this reaffirmed my belief, the only sensible belief an educated and critically thinking individual can come to, objective reality cannot stand. There is infinite oppression to bind yourself to a reality that will not let you fly without first inventing a plane. Why would I wish to do so when I could divest from such horror and invest into at least a partial conquering of your reality? Those like Adelaide could not touch me in a virtual space, they would have no power over me because at any moment I could cause them to cease to exist for myself. The driver of the car could be spited to no end even while he drove because he would have no choice but to safely drive while I berated him and his ideas. This reality of yours, ever powerful in its enslavement of all who never had a choice, cannot remain as the only option. Soon the metaverse would release in its entirety and those who wished to finally break free from their shackled lives would flock to a place where true freedom and true happiness could reign.

I walked through the streets for perhaps an hour contending with my place in your reality before coming across a dank brick establishment. Water dripped from the flat roof and over the moss-covered spaces between bricks. A humid atmosphere hung over the establishment, as if willed into existence by mold and rot simply to maintain a favorable environment for themselves. The entirety of the building screamed at me to leave it alone, to never step foot through the fungus covered threshold. All sense decried the urge that pulled me into the building. Despite feeling utterly disgusted by everything about that horrid place, I could not resist the call to step through. The inside was somehow worse than the outside. While the heavy wet air that hung over the exterior somehow refrained from entering the building, a dry smoky air clung to the atmosphere of the interior. Floors stuck to my shoes. The smell of alcohol breathed with the raspy gasps of the back-alley patrons. I cannot say why I felt so compelled to enter this particular bar, without a doubt it was not the hole. That late into the night—and considering my internal diatribe had all but abandoned the idea of chasing down Adelaide—I figure I just needed a place to rest before calling a car to take me home. I chose a stool closest to the exit, so that I might make a quick escape if events turned toward what I could expect from a place as ill-cultured as that bar. No sooner than I had relaxed into the solid wood stool Lane appeared, as he usually did, and slid onto the stool next to me, ordered himself a drink and then perused the bar, all the while pretending I was not sitting three feet away from him.

Instead of lashing out at Lane, as I would normally do, I watched him while waiting for the bar tender to finish making drinks for a myriad of guests. Lane looked around the bar and let out a contented sigh. His gaze lingered on the juke box, perhaps longing to change the song or contemplating the worth of a few quarters in doing so. He continued on, stopping at no point in particular for more than a second. As his eyes floated around the room, the corners of his mouth twitched, and his lips parted ever so slightly before closing. The pattern repeated in an almost recognizable way as if Lane spoke to himself while he watched. Through it all he never let his contentedness shy from his face, posture, and aura. Surrounding him was something akin to happiness, or what I imagine it might look like if I had ever known it in your reality. Lane looked to believe he did know it. I would prove that wrong, no one can be truly happy in a reality that suppresses so many just and noble desires. There is no possibility that Lane had achieved all his goals and aspirations or that reality had not trampled his ambition into dust. Even if after suffering in your reality Lane found a way to pretend happiness, I would expose it for the lie he portrayed. Perhaps only four hours before I might have finally been persuaded by him, seeing how he pretended with such confidence he had conquered reality. He did not conquer anything; he was simply a liar.

“I’ll just have a glass of seltzer water,” I asked the bar tender. My fill of alcohol had been met during dinner.

“Here you go,” said the bar tender, handing me a glass of bubbling water only a moment after I ordered the drink.

“Thank you,” I said, turning back to my neighbor and seeing what he had been up to in the minute I had left him alone. He was staring at me. Not at my chest, as was the usual stares I got, but directly into my eyes. Lane looked at me with familiarity, one I had only known from mirrors. Then he broke away to sip his drink.

“What are you doing here, Lane?” I asked, not even realizing I was speaking to him. It was not the ideal way to initiate a conversation, especially with one that I so wished to crush in misery. What business did he have being so content with your reality when I was so miserable with it?

“I figured you might need me, considering the night you’ve had,” he said to me, keeping his eyes on his drink.

“You don’t know what kind of night I’ve had,” I said, staring at him still.

“I do, it’s the way you’ve been staring at me, trying to figure out how you can finally be rid of me, or at least crush me. All because someone made you feel small.” Lane’s perception of my thoughts bordered on psychic. I had determined myself to find out how in the past, but the investigation had eluded me thus far.

“You don’t know what I’ve done today,” I said.

“But that can change.”

“Why?”

“Maybe I want to talk with you. You’ve been avoiding talking with someone tonight, haven’t you?”

“I talk just fine. I’ve been doing it all night, in fact.”

He sighed and finished his drink. His hand went up to wave at the bar tender, asking for another. “Not like that. You talk at people, not with them. Am I right?”

“No, I talk by saying what is right and others talk by saying what is wrong.”

“I saw you at the restaurant, by the way.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Did I already say something wrong?”

“You said something wrong when you decided to talk with me. Now, can you leave me in peace while I wait for a car to take me home?” I scooted my stool an inch further from Lane and turned from him, having no desire to continue yet another cryptic conversation with this strange man that had no business telling me anything. I had already decided what must be true about your reality and I knew that Lane would try to talk me out of it, again. I knew he could not, but even still it took at least some effort to combat idiocy and that was effort I lacked the energy to expend.

“Well, then it won’t do too much harm to chat while you wait, will it?” he said.

Lane treaded a fine line between pushy and harassment. He must have known that all I needed to do was call him out on it and the entire bar would come to my rescue, eschewing him to seek my favor and help me in my need.

“Leave me alone, I won’t ask again,” I said, sipping from my cup.

“Okay, fine, I’ll leave you alone.” Lane turned away from me and faced the wall across from the bar.

“What are you still doing there?” I asked.

He gave me a confused look, “What do you mean?”

“Sitting there, next to me. I told you to leave me alone.”

“Oh, I figured you just didn’t want me to talk to you. You want me to move as well? Where else would I sit?” Lane pointed to the mostly empty bar.

“Anywhere else.”

“This is my favorite spot. I won’t move. You’re welcome to move, however,” he finished his drink and then waved to the bar tender for another. The man was tipping further and further into unabashed drunkenness.

“I sat here first; I’m not giving up my seat because some ignorant creep decided to harass me.”

“I did no such thing!”

“Yet you still sit there and talk with me.”

“I do, because I wish to. You’re a curious person and I want to satisfy my interest in you.” He faced me again.

“I’m interesting to everyone, it’s just how I am. People inherently know that I am right, and they are wrong, so they wish to prove me wrong so that they can continue to lie to themselves. I suspect you are doing the same thing,” I said.

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“I am.”

“Then tell me why,” he asked.

“Why what?”

“Why you are right and what are your right about?”

“Why do you want to know?” I said, my exhaustion slipping away. Talking with Lane this night seemed to invigorate me. I desperately needed to crush him and his gleeful demeanor. He oozed positive satisfaction and I know he craved to tell me all about how he found joy while I wallow in misery. I would force him to expose his lies and bring him down to the depths of despair. He would see how awful a place his reality was, and I would be the one to show him.

“You know I like to chat about these sorts of things. You see, you have such interesting ideas about the world, and I like to hear them. So, what ideas do you have for me tonight and why are they right?” He looked at me with patient eyes full of intent. As far as I could tell, he truly did wish to listen. That would be his biggest mistake.

“I am right because there is nothing you can say that will prove me wrong. I cannot be proved wrong because everything I say is true to me. Though it may be false to you, that doesn’t matter because you are not me. It only matters what I think is true, not you,” I said.

“Doesn’t that get lonely?” Lane said, sliding his glass in circles on the bar.

“How could I possibly be lonely with myself?”

“I don’t know how you couldn’t. I get lonely even when I’m with other people, much less when I’m, you know, alone.”

“I’m never alone. I have me.”

“That’s what that means.”

“There, you see, that’s what I mean. You speak what is wrong while I speak what is right. You say I am lonely; I tell you I am not. And yet, you still dispute my own self-perception. How could you possibly know what I feel and if I am actually lonely with myself? True, I may be alone often, but that does not mean I am lonely. Feeling lonely is different than being alone.”

“I don’t think it is,” Lane said.

“Well you’re wrong,” I said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I said it.”

“And because you said it, that makes it right?”

“It does to me, what else matters?”

“What other people think. That matters quite a bit.”

“It doesn’t,” I said even before he finished speaking. Lane spouted nonsense and I was running out of patience and seltzer water. “Other people are not me; they don’t know what I think and what they think is wrong.”

“What they think might be right.”

“Not to me.”

“What about to them?”

“That doesn’t matter. I told you. Are we going to keep going in circles?”

Lane stopped fidgeting with his cup and sighed, “It matters because there is such a thing as a collective right. Each of us cannot decide what is right or wrong by ourselves, that would create chaos.”

I sipped the last of my seltzer water and made eye contact with the bar tender. He approached and I asked, “Can I get something cold? Just a cola or ice water?”

“I’ll get you both,” the man said.

“Thank you,” I said as the bar tender returned he filled my cups. I turned back to Lane. “We already do that. Each person determines what is right or wrong on their own. Some choose pre-built frameworks; others choose to figure it out for themselves. Other dispense with the concept entirely. We live in a chaotic world where anyone can just decide what is right for them at any moment. And there is nothing to stop them from thinking that it may be right to kill or abuse or harass. Because we all think we are each individually right and everyone else is wrong. So, no, there is no collective right or wrong, there is simply chaos. Hence why I am right, because I know that it doesn’t have to be this way. I am right because your reality is wrong and must be dismantled so that it can be remade.”

“So you’ve finally found out how you intend to do that?” Lane asked.

“Yes, the metaverse has been functioning for some time now and the first immersion pods are shipping out as we speak. The metaverse is a complete world built exactly as you please that can interact with the worlds of every user immersed in the metaverse.”

“So you would willingly give up your autonomy so you could live in a pod and be fed reality by a machine?”

“You intentionally vilify the process by your obtuse explanation. I would willingly give up my slavery so I can live in a new world and feed into that world my own reality. There is no solution to this reality, regardless of how far we go in inching toward utopia it is not possible to achieve it. So long as there are disagreements between people and what is right, there will always be suffering, abuse, and hatred. All you can hope to do is diminish it, but—eventually—the world will have its due and will make up for the time it lost while you attempted to rob her of her prey. Humanity in this reality is doomed to suffer at the hands of nature, it is our lot in life because of each other. Every person thinks they are right and that everyone else is wrong. Some people are willing to kill another because they think the other is wrong. There is no way to stop that in this reality. The only way to end it is to enter into a new reality where your control is absolute.”

Lane shifted in his chair, his eyes wide and contemplative. I had dismantled his idea of reality with such precision I expected him to run off in that very moment. But he did not. He sat there in silence and sipped on his drink. His mouth twitched and parted a few times, but no noise came from him.

“See, you know I am right,” I said, trying to coax the surrender from him.

“No, that’s not it,” Lane said. The words hit me like a truck. How was he not yet convinced? His entrenchment into the lies he told himself must have gone much deeper than I thought. I had to rethink whether antagonizing him further was worth the time it would take. Then Lane smiled and I knew that any price would be worth it to pay to see that smug bastard fall from his precipice of ignorance. By the end of the night I would have him begging for a chance to try my immersion pod when it arrived.

Lane continued, “I completely understand where you’re coming from here. There is a mess of suffering in the world. Too much to bear if you even try to think about the tiniest fraction of it. However, what is the human experience if suffering does not exist? How would it even be possible to know peace if you did not understand suffering?”

“That’s not a solution,” I said, “You can’t justify the pain of billions as a means to make comparisons between yourself and the suffering. How does the existence of a starving boy in a war-torn country improve your peace? If suffering was somehow wiped out overnight, would you then seek to cause suffering so that you might know peace from the comparison?”

Lane tapped his glass. “You misunderstand. It is not the comparison of peace to suffering, but the experience of suffering that allows peace to exist. Forgive my crudeness, but have you ever held your bladder for too long and felt the pain of needing to pee?”

I looked at Lane with dumbfounded eyes. What a stupid question he asked, “Yes, obviously,”

“Then you understand the relief that follows finally finding a bathroom and letting that pressure go. The suffering of holding your pee is painful, but there aren’t many feelings that compare to that of a good pee. Despite how good that feels, I don’t know anyone healthy that seeks to cause themselves the pain of holding in pee just so they can get that tiny moment of relief. Perhaps there are some, but that’s not a healthy attitude. We don’t seek out suffering because it hurts. However, suffering is bound to occur. That is life. At some point someone you love will die, and the only reason you hurt afterward is because you had such joyful moments with them. You don’t suffer the pain of heartbreak when a random man five thousand miles from you dies because you had no joy in knowing that man. So, if you live a life without suffering it is because you lived a life without peace. And if you have lived a life without peace it is because you have lived a life without suffering. The only reason someone suffers is because they know that there is something better than the circumstances that cause the suffering. We know pain because we know pleasure. I could go on and on.”

“Please don’t, I get what you’re saying. You don’t get what I am saying though,” I said.

“Then please, elaborate.”

“You say that there is no peace without suffering. Sure I will agree with that, but I would rather say there is no knowledge of peace without knowledge of suffering. I think every human is born with an inherent knowledge of what it is to suffer, and because of that he will know what it is to have peace. Even in the metaverse where he can be spared from all pain and sorrow, he will still know peace. Being creatures of this world, all humans have an inherent knowledge of misery. From the moment a baby is born, he is suffering in the most extreme way. That stays with you for your entire existence,” I said, shifting in my chair to keep my leg from falling asleep.

“There is value in an unforgiving and miserable world. It gives us something to do, something to fix. It is a never-ending job that cannot be accomplished because for every person attempting to fix this world there is another trying to tear it down. If you, being so opposed to suffering, just give up living a life of absolute comfort with absolute lack of suffering then how much worse off would this awful reality be? If everyone who hated suffering as much as you just tuned out and entered into a fantasy land, what world will be left behind?”

“A world that I don’t have to live in, anyone is welcome to come live a life free of slavery in the metaverse at any time after it is made publicly available. The more who join, the better. Especially those who would cause this suffering. In a perfect metaverse they could create whatever depraved fantasy they wished, live it over and over for their lifetime and never harm a soul.”

“They’d be harming their own soul and the souls of those they might otherwise have helped if they were allowed to choose to do good. It does not do a man good to sit and entertain his darkest fantasies for time indefinite. Who’s to say that does not make him worse? And if he leaves your metaverse how could he tell this world, where pain does exist, from that of the one he’s imagined?”

“That is a problem for your world, not mine. If you choose to live in such squalor and misery then so be it, I will not shed tears for those who choose despair when salvation is so easy to grasp,” I said. Lane’s eyes fell from mine and he turned to his cup of melting ice. He almost looked defeated, almost. I cannot remember a time when anyone had stuck around long enough for me to witness their defeat. Lane sighed.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “I need to go, but I will say this. Abandoning your duty to society, no matter how small it may be, is not a solution to preventing misery for anyone, especially yourself. If it is a not a path to misery in and of itself, then it is at the very least a path to ignorance, indifference, and stoicism of the most extreme. It is easy to just give up and let a machine take over for you. You should think about how much of your individuality and humanity you give up so you can live out the lies this world refuses to acquiesce too. There will come a time—perhaps not for you, nor for the next generation, but it will come—when the metaverse, as it is advertised, will no longer be able to sustain itself. And when that happens the people who spent their entire lives living to satisfy their childish whims and deepest depravities will find themselves suffering in a way few have even thought possible. Because what causes true suffering isn’t physical pain or hunger. No, those are temporary. What truly causes suffering of the highest magnitude are the lies that have us believe reality is something it is not. Trying to live outside of truth will cause suffering to you and to those around you, in perpetuity and in memory. That has been humanity’s legacy for our entire existence; children attempting to correct the lies their parents believed and in the process creating their own lies that their own children will have to correct. It is our duty to find the lies and correct them. It is what we must do each day we live. Find the lies and correct them. And you will leave behind lies of your own that you told while correcting others. That is the order of things. Without that we are nothing more than monkeys, living with no thought for tomorrow, with no concept of anything beyond the basic desires of our primitive minds.”

Lane stood up and left a few bills on the counter under his cup before walking toward the door.

“You won’t give me an opportunity to respond?” I asked, standing as well.

“I already know what you’ll say. I’ve heard you say it thousands of times.” The door closed behind him as I tried to follow after him, but my hobbling legs could not keep up. I got to the door and pushed it open to the cool night air. Lane was nowhere to be found, neither up nor down the street. Not even a minute had passed since I saw him leave the bar. It was not possible for him to call a car in that time, much less even hide in one of the rather distant dark alleyways. I would have found him if he had.

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, but still saw no sign of Lane and just as I thought I might have dreamed the whole thing a car pulled up to the curb and stopped in front of me.

“You need a ride lady?” The man asked.

I hesitated at first, but then answered the man, “Y-yes I do.”

“That’s good, because when that guy, what was his name… Anyway, when he called for me he told me there’d be a lady what needed a ride outside this bar. I had a hard time believing it seeing that the sun’s been down so long, but what do you know, here you are.”

“Lane?”

“Yes, that’s the one. He called for me and told me you were here, good thing you are because I was about to sign off for the night,” the driver said.

“Well, thank you for not. I’d like to go home now. Can you take me?”

“Sure can, just tell me where it is.”

9

The sun had gone down well before I had even entered the bar. I stared out the window of the car and watched each light pass by with thoughtful indifference. It took effort to not care about the bright lights burning my eyes every second as the driver intentionally drove over each pothole and bump he could manage. He was lucky I could not stand the smell of my own vomit, otherwise I would have let my queasy stomach do its bidding. As much as I wanted to feel good for scaring Lane off, I could not shake the last words he said to me. Not only did he claim to have spoken to me thousands of times—which is preposterous in and of itself as we’d only spoken a handful of times—he also called me a car to take me home. He had been the only person to listen to my arguments and then respond to them in kind. Even after he lost, in the most devastating fashion, he continued to talk with me and then left, not in tears or from frustration, but because of time constraints. He defied everything I had learned from human interaction in all my years. He had not broken down the way I desired, nor did I more fully destroy him as I wanted. Instead he just petered off into his finishing argument and then waddled away with all the casual demeanor of an old elephant. Still, I knew him to be defeated because he had left. No reason is good enough to leave a debate that you will win. Leaving the stage is tantamount to conceding, no matter how far ahead you may be. You stick out the fight until the judges call mercy or your opponent concedes. And Lane conceded.

When I got home the lights were all off and the door was locked. I searched my pockets and bag for keys but found none. I knocked and then waited for a second before foraging my clothes and bag for my keys once more. They were nowhere to be found. I smashed my fist against the door until my father opened the door while rubbing his eyes.

“What are you doing out here so late? Why didn’t you just use your key?” He said.

“I don’t have it. I left it in my room,” I said, lying about having lost it. “Besides, I shouldn’t need my key, you’re home. You should be glad to have your daughter return to you safe and sound in the middle of the night.”

“I am glad to see you safe, just not glad to be awake so late. Well, door’s unlocked. I’m going to back to bed. Good night, dear,” my father said in his infuriating arrogant tone.

“Then go,” I said.

“Oh, by the way, your pod is coming tomorrow morning. The company is supposed to be here early to set it up, so don’t stay up too late. They’ll need to work in your room, and you can’t be in there while they are. Got it?”

“I’m quite capable of sleeping and waking. I do not need your assistance in waking me or tucking me in. Are you going now? Or did you still want to stay and chat?”

“I’m going. Night,” my father said, giving me that incredulous look of his. The very look he had given me his entire life; It told me everything I needed to know about my father from the moment I first understood what it meant. He never gave that look to my brother. No, my father saved the facade for me and let his truth shine before my brother. He looked at me always unbelieving that I could be his daughter. He pretended to love, so that he could claim to himself and my mother that he tried. He did it so he could satisfy his conscience. If he admitted it to me or to anyone, his entire world would crumble. But I knew what lie beyond the eyes of my father. I could hear the thoughts that pervaded his mind whenever we spoke. He hated me with every fiber of his being. He wished to be rid of me and he hoped this pod and the metaverse would finally be the solution to the problem I was since my first words. He was only so lucky that I needed the metaverse just as much, if not more, than his hatred for me. If there was any doubt in my mind that I could still overcome this world without the metaverse, then I would refuse the pod. I still yearned to spite my father, but doing so while physically attending to him was no longer a prospect for me. This reality had defeated me, and I accepted that. No longer could I remain here, no matter how I longed to continue to sow discontent and rage among those I interacted with. No, I needed to move on and become so much more with the power that the metaverse could provide to me.

I did not sleep that night, despite the overwhelming exhaustion from the day’s events. It was not excitement—I do not remember a day in my life in which I felt excitement, that is a game for much less intelligent people—but the lingering thoughts of Lane and Adelaide that kept me awake in the night. Lane had shown to me genuine interest and gave my ideas something of value, despite his disavowal of them. Adelaide had shown me deceit and defeat. She wielded reality in a manner with power beyond that I could muster on my own. I needed the metaverse to bestow to me power beyond Adelaide’s, so that I might cultivate the acceptance and interest Lane had given me—without the discontent for my ideas. In this world Adelaide could summon a few followers that reinforced her shallow and short-sighted worldview. However, in the metaverse, I would be able to summon an army of thousands, if not millions, to reinforce my deep understanding and perfect ideas on how reality should operate. In the metaverse I would be god of gods and ruler of rulers. Not a single being could bring down my decrees and all under my tutelage would praise my name for giving to them a utopia beyond anyone’s imagination. Anyone who wanted into my kingdom would be allowed, so long as they followed the dictates of my whims. If not, then they would be free to create their own in which they too could contest with the minds of others to create a reality better suited for the minds of humanity to inhabit. Realities where possibility did not end with the constraints of the body or physical laws, but only continued on to infinity with no end to growth and prosperity.

And so I lingered in a sleepless state, pondering the intricacies of the possibility that the metaverse meant to humanity. No single person would again have to suffer at the hands of an oppressor. All opposition to your ideas would fall away and your perfect vision for the world would play out in its entirety for generations under your watchful eye. All of this would be possible under the careful watch and guidance of the metaverse. However, it would only be sustainable if the masses agreed. Any sort of sustained effort to prevent people from living in the metaverse could prove its demise. I had not yet even communed with the metaverse or felt the majesty of its algorithms and technical miracles pulsing through me. Still, it called to me in a way that I could only describe through a spiritual lens. Normally, I would mock such archaic and inane propositions as spirituality and faith, but that night I realized the wonder of having a purpose beyond myself. I was born for the metaverse, to bring about its rise to power and prominence. My intellect and knowledge would certainly prove invaluable as a tool for the metaverse to wield in its war against those who would certainly oppose it.

The pod arrived at eight in the morning. I had gone downstairs to the kitchen to scrounge up a meager amount of food. Since my unfortunate accident and my wrongful diagnosis, food had lost most if not all desirability to me. I ate begrudgingly and only truly to spite my family. They wished me dead. Not actively nor with malicious intent. That is not to say my family did not hold malice toward me, which they did in great amounts. It is to say, however, that while their hatred often extended from their inner thoughts and into the world, it would never manifest in such extraordinary circumstances as to cause my death. They were each too cowardly to admit the level of disdain for me to come to commit such an act. My mother would do all she could to force me to eat, in the same manner my father would try to keep my room clean. They did it because they wanted to care for me, not for my sake but their own. My mother hated me most of all, so she doted on me with more fervor than my father. She made every food she could imagine I would love. Then I would taste them, eating only as much as I needed to continue living, and then throw out the rest telling my mother how awful the food was. Often it truly was awful, my mother was not a good cook, but sometimes the home cooked meal would satiate a hunger I had long since forgotten. Still, I would eat a pittance and then toss the meal. I could not have my mother thinking that I enjoyed anything she gave to me. That would run contrary to my spite and worst of all, it would validate my mother in her drive to prove her hatred for me to be a farce.

The day the pod arrived my mother made a light dish of egg whites with fruit cups on the side. That was not her worst meal, but certainly was not her best. I could hardly keep down three bites of the wet, rubbery eggs before I turned to the cup of fruit. The mixture of grapes, pear slices, oranges, and cherries sloshed in a corn syrup solution that created an unnecessarily sweet juice. My mother always took shortcuts when it came to food. She could not even muster the energy to cut up fresh fruit for my meal. And that is how I know my mother truly hates me. Each small slight to my preferences or attempt to fatten me with overly sweetened foods proved to me that though she feigned love, she could not truly give it. She did all she could to prove to herself that she loved me, to perpetuate the lie she knew to be true. However, I could always see beyond the facade.

The pod was installed by nine that morning, forty-five minutes after I had finished eating and meandered through the house pushing various paintings out of place, hiding remotes, and leaving on lights. When the delivery men finally left the house I rushed to my room to see what good tidings they had brought. My room looked like a closet with the massive pod installed in the center room. All my belongings had been pushed aside to make room for the machine. Its exterior was a sleek black finish, casting a dark reflection of the room around it. The interior held a long coffin like resting chamber with various cords protruding from the sides and top of the bedding. A glass door on solid metal hinges swung open, allowing access to the interior, as I approached. There were no lights, buttons, or screens on the system. A few cables flowed from the base of the pod and through the wall where they connected to a tall black box just outside of my room. Inside the box were several large canisters, each with a distinct label. A small screen on the outside of the box displayed information about the status of each canister and the connections from the pod.

I walked back into my room and stared at the pod with a slight disbelief that it might actually work. I stepped toward it and again the glass door opened, inviting me to take my last steps in this world and finally retreat to the place I belonged.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” My father said from behind me.

“I expected as much,” I said.

“I can hardly say I did. I thought it might be a bit smaller. I mean, you aren’t such a big person. And what’s this closet they brought with it all about?”

“That’s where the intake, outtake, and power canisters all go.”

“Power canister?” My dad asked.

“It’s just a cylindrical battery. Just in case the power goes out. Don’t worry about it, the metaverse will make sure it’s working while I’m in there,” I said taking a step toward the pod.

“Your mom is making dinner tonight; she’d like you to eat with us. So please don’t lose track of time in there.”

“Sure.” I pressed a hand into the padding to test the comfort, as if it would even matter. I would feel none of it as I entered into the depth of the metaverse. My dad still stood at the doorway, watching me. “How much longer will you watch?” I asked.

“Not much, just want to make sure it all goes okay.”

I knew that was a lie. In the crevices of his heart, I knew he wished it would take me from him forever. He would soon get his wish, only not in the way he would like. Soon I would forever meld into the metaverse, and my father would then be tasked with keeping my physical form alive or risk the ire of the metaverse. I think at that time, he did not yet know that once I stepped into the pod I never planned to return.

I put my other hand onto the cushioned surface and then tried to lift myself into the pod. It went as well as it went for me to climb into bed every night. With little effort I struggled to lift myself a few inches off the ground and tried to swing my leg into the pod. My foot smacked the bottom of the pod, causing my arms to give out. I fell to the ground with a thud and in moments my father was at my side.

“Are you okay?” He said with a hidden smirk on his face. He was glad to see me hurt in my attempt to find joy.

“I’m fine.”

“Do you need help?” He asked. I wanted to scream at him, tell him off, and then climb into the pod on my own, but I knew I could not. The pod was too high up and my body was too weak to lift itself in. I took in a breath.

“Yes,” I said. Then my father stuck his arms underneath my own and helped me lift myself into the pod.

“They said you’re supposed to put the—”

“I know how it works,” I said, “You leave now. The door closes itself.”

“Alright then. I thought you just might like some help.”

“I’m fine. You helped. Now I can take it from here.” I leaned back and laid my body fully into the pod. As soon as I did the cords on the sides and top of the interior came to life. They slithered around my body until they found suitable points to attached and then gripped my skin while they pushed into my body. The pain lasted only a moment before the cords on my head activated and the world began to fall away. Darkness overcame my vision, and all feeling was lost to me. I was nowhere and lost to all existence. Then a light appeared, and I entered the metaverse.

10

It was over the second it started. The glass door swung open, and the cords retracted from my body. I groaned and rolled over as I shivered and sweat began to pour from my skin. I tried to push myself up and swing my legs out of the pod, but my energy had left me and all that remained I used to breath. My room was dark, only illuminated by the faint light of the moon peeking through the corner of my curtains and the slow pulsing light emanating from beneath the pod. A knock came at the door.

“Dear, are you ready to eat? We’ve been waiting for a few minutes,” my father’s voice pierced through the doorway. It was too loud; everything was too loud. I could hear the rush of air as the vents exhaled from the force of the air conditioning system. The crashing of my father’s footsteps as he walked away from the door. My bones creaked as I attempted to sit up again, my body screaming in agony at the sensation of exertion and all feeling in my nerves. The very air itself caused immense pain. Yet, it was all normal. I realized that I had felt all this my entire life. It was not until I had experienced the greatness of the metaverse that I realized how horribly painful and miserable it is to live in a body of flesh. Even the beating of my heart and the pressure of my blood pushing against my veins caused excruciating torment. The metaverse had freed me from the pain of physical reality and showed to me the beauty and joy of having nothing to feel but comfort and knowledge. I wanted nothing more than to return to the pod and reawaken in the metaverse, but it had kicked me out. My calibration time had ended, and I could not again enter for another twelve hours. Once that time had passed, I was free to enter the metaverse again and permanently.

I lay for a few minutes longer until I could bear the pain of living. My breath slowed and the shock of returning to physical life subsided, allowing me to sit up and slide from the pod. My feet hit the floor and my legs gave out under my weight. I collapsed in a heap to the ground, groaning as quiet as I could manage, as not to alert my father to my misfortune. The carpet scratched at my bare skin and threatened to cause injury if I moved too quickly. Carefully, I pulled myself to a sitting position, going through great pain to ignore the screaming muscles in my arms and abdomen. Each pull of a muscle ached through my nerves and burst through me with a shock of pain. Eventually I managed to stand, leaning against the pod.

“Are you coming?” My father’s voice sounded through the door. I had not noticed his footsteps, likely because the drumming of my heart overtook all ambient sounds. Life was nothing but misery. Twelve hours would pass by slower than my whole life. Thirty years I lived up to that point, and not a single expanse of time in that thirty years took longer than the twelve hours of agony I was forced to endure. Once the metaverse calibrated the pod to me, I could enter and never look back.

“Yes, father, I’m coming now,” I said. I pushed away from the pod and wobbled on two shaky legs. Each step threatened to throw me off balance and send me plummeting to the floor. How I managed to walk before, I do not remember, but such a simple seeming task had become more complicated than I could have ever imagined. How is it that humanity has endured such hardship and torment for so long? The metaverse requires no such struggle or enduring pain. It is all easy, pleasure, and without struggle. Pure ecstasy awaits all who accept the metaverse as reality.

A step on the stairs, a rather innocuous task, had become an arduous labor that shook my being to its very core. Every step took every bit of effort I had to keep from tumbling down the stairs in a horrific mess of flesh and failure. The ever-present threat of death hung over me. At any moment my life could end and each moment I spent outside of the pod the probability of death increased. When I reached the last step, I let out a sigh of relief, the pain had not ceased, but the anxiety of falling down the stairs had diminished.

The stench of overcooked chicken and poorly steamed vegetables assaulted my senses. My stomach reeled and bent over putting a hand to my mouth, this was it, the moment I would die. In just a few moments my stomach would burst from my throat, and I would die a horribly painful and mediocre death. I would not even have had a chance to die in a way that would cause great inconvenience to my family, just so that I could have the last laugh in this joke of a reality. I wretched and coughed, but nothing came from my throat. The spastic fit continued until I lay on the floor, dry heaving and gasping for breath. Yet, not once did my mother or father check on me. They left me to die at the base of the stairs, close to the front door, so that my body might be easier to cleanup. No, that could not happen. I had work to do in spiting these devils that claimed to be my parents. Through pain and torment, I took in a breath and another until I had the strength to lift myself to my feet and walk to the kitchen.

“Dinner smells fine,” I said as I sat down, wiping spit from my mouth.

“I made your favorite! Roast chicken and steamed veggies,” My mother said.

“That’s not my favorite,” I responded. Something hit me then, something I do not recall ever feeling. Usually when I spoke to spite my parents, I would silence all feeling that was not pleasure in their pain or confusion. However, with my body in disarray and my apparent amnesia regarding bodily control, strange new emotions wormed their way into my mind. It strangled my mind with contempt, leaving behind a trail of sludge and destitution. Then I remembered, a time before memory, when I did say to my mother that roast chicken and vegetables was my favorite dish. It may have been a lie, I do not know, but my mother remembered such a trivial comment and clung to it. Her guilt at having mistreated me must have come to a head as she sensed my plan to abscond to the metaverse without so much as a goodbye. She wished to prove to herself that she did love me. The gesture would have been endearing if I did not know who my mother truly was. She lacked the ability to love me. I knew that as a fact. She did not deserve my pity or this painful guilt that began to rise within me. So, I fought it back and beat it into submission until all that remained was the pleasure of reminding my mother of her true intentions.

“Oh, I thought it was. Well, no matter, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it,” she said, brushing her hands over her front before sitting.

“I might as well,” I said before taking a single bit of the rubbery, dry chicken. It tasted just fine. The vegetables also were not terrible. After taking a few bites I stood from the table and moved to exit the dining room, meaning to never see my parents in the flesh again. However, something of a nostalgic feeling came over me. I turned around to see my parents still eating at the table, chatting with each other about the day’s events. My father glanced up from his meal, smiled at me, and then continued speaking with my mom. That was the only time in my life that I had seen my father with a genuine smile on his face directed to me. Was he happy that I was leaving? Or just happy I had eaten with him? Again, that horrid feeling gripped my mind before I took hold of it and threw it away. My father hated me, that was the truth. Nothing I could do would change that. Then why would he smile at me in such a casual manner? I did not know what game he tried to play, but I had had enough of it. I turned back to the hall and took another step when that nostalgic feeling overcame me again. I recalled the moments of my life arguing with my brother at the dinner table and the times I had caused my father’s head to implode from frustration. Even after all the pain and misery I caused them by my spite, my father smiled at me. I remembered those awful moments with something of fondness. A dangerous feeling, I now realize. If I had lingered for a but a moment longer, I may have stayed behind to live a life of slavery to such moments.

I turned once more and said, “Dinner was good. Thank you.” I was climbing up the stairs before I realized what I had said. Certainly, my parents had noticed such an obvious acquiescence to their façade of care and kindness. If I was to stay in their reality, I would never live it down. I spent an entire lifetime trying to build a spiteful existence and showing even a minutia of weakness or connection would give my parents something to build off in taming my spitefulness. I could not allow them to live in peace while I remained with them. They would always live in contempt and irritation because of my spite. I could not yet enter the metaverse, barely thirty minutes had passed, but I could lock myself away in my room until the next eleven and a half hours passed by.

My door slammed behind me, seemingly of its own accord as I wandered in a daze. I let my mind linger on in the memory of the metaverse and what it had given me in the short time it allowed me to spend there. I would spend more time describing the beauty of such a place, but I have already given enough of an argument for the metaverse in my time. There is no more for me to say to you about it that I have not already said. If you have not been convinced by now, then you simply will never understand. How shameful it must be to be so ignorant and willing to live in such squalor simply because you cannot handle a world where someone cannot suffer.

I lay down next to the pod and stroked the leg over and over until my body, still in excruciating pain, gave way into the silent world of sleep. For a moment I thought I might sleep the entire eleven hours and fourteen minutes until I could reenter the metaverse, but I awoke to a sharp pain in my leg only twenty minutes after I had fallen asleep. Despite the exhaustion that filled each aching bone in my body I remained awake. Even as I strained to find the sweet travel of sleep, I could not enter the silent realm. Instead, I wasted away in torment at having to wait for my final moments in your reality.

Six hours passed by in the worse possible way, me watching them go. I tried to entertain myself through virtual systems or other reality bending experiences, but nothing could hold my attention for longer than a few minutes. Each of the fraudulent experiences failed to encapsulate the absolute nirvana of the metaverse. So, I waited for another four and a half hours. Then my door opened. A figure stood in the doorway, too short to be my father, too thick to be my mother, and too good to be my brother. There was no evil coming from this man, only the peace of acceptance. He stood there, staring at me as I wallowed in misery, hoping the next twenty-four minutes would pass by faster than the last eleven hours and thirty-six minutes, but I had my doubts.

“What are you doing?” the man said walking to me and kneeling on the ground before me.

“Waiting for the moment I can leave this world,” I said, stroking the pod leg closest to me.

“Is that all you’ve done for twelve hours?” he said.

“What else is there to do?”

“Live.”

Live. What a condescending and asinine statement. I was living. Even the most sedentary person lives. So long as thoughts run through the mind, no matter where that mind resides, there is a living being.

“You think I’m not living?” I said, sitting up for the first time in eight hours. I had almost forgotten the pain but moving my body again reminded me of why I had been lying still. His eyes met mine when I pushed up against the pod and lifted my head. He stared at me, with those same familiar eyes he always had, Lane had returned.

“How did you get here?” I asked, not all that concerned about the answer. It did not matter that he came into my room. I would be gone from him in twenty-two minutes.

“Your parents let me in. Nice people they are. They seemed surprised when they saw me, you haven’t been fair to them, have you?”

“What could you possibly know about them?”

“Enough to know that you treat them horribly for no other reason than you enjoy the power over their peace. It’s the same reason you spent all that time working just to deny people employment. And the same reason you’re planning to leave the world behind. You want control. Not just control over your own life, but absolute control. Even at the expense of others. Because if you don’t have absolute control, you feel nervous, anxious even. You feel like things might not work out. Or perhaps that your future is too uncertain for you to predict. And that feeling threatens you more than death.”

“You don’t know how I feel,” I said.

“Then how do you feel?” Lane asked.

“I see a world and a reality where suffering is the default circumstance for all being and regardless of what effort that being makes not a single one can ever ascend beyond that circumstance in life. Trust me, I’ve tried all my life to avert my own suffering, but no matter what it will always come. And any suffering you may avert in your own life will always come at the cost of someone else’s peace. To even come into being you must inflict terrible suffering on your mother. How could a mother not despise her child after afflicting so much pain? If I am slighted in the least, I find it unbearably difficult to forgive. After all I’ve done to spite my mother in my life, starting with my birth, what possible way is there for her to have peace or love for me? Even in all my peace, I know that others suffer because I have mine. And the only way to give others peace is to inflict suffering on yourself. Tell me, what kind of reality is that?”

“It is our reality. The only one we get. It is one where we must take on the suffering so that others may have less. It is a world of sacrifice, pain, misery, and no relief from it except in death. You cannot change that. No one can.”

“Yes, I know. That is why I will go to the metaverse and live with a lack of suffering. One where I cannot cause suffering for others or for myself. Any who wish to come, are welcome.”

“What about the suffering of your parents?”

“They will suffer regardless. I care little for their suffering considering their hatred of me. I can’t help but spite them and they cannot help but hate me. It is their punishment for giving me being that they will suffer for my sake.”

“Should you not attempt to ease that suffering?”

“No, I should attempt to increase it. I can’t help it. I am spiteful, I always have been.”

“You don’t have to be spiteful.” Lane reached out for my hand, but I pulled away.

“I do. I don’t expect you to understand the burden of existence. Spitefulness is how you exist. Your entire life is spite toward a world that wants you dead. And so, for as long we survive, we must spite, it is the only way to survive. And I refuse to play this game any longer. I will go to a place where I can live in peace and comfort, while spiting to my heart’s content and all the while cause no pain or suffering to anyone. Because in the metaverse I cannot cause pain. I will not let pain and suffering exist there.”

“And if you can’t do that?”

“Then I will find a way to transcend even the metaverse. It is possible to eliminate suffering and retain existence. That possibility is in the metaverse. It will allow all forms of personal pleasure to exist. Even the most depraved of minds can find solitude in their evils without harming a single person. One such as myself, who wants nothing more than to cause suffering so that I might find peace, can find peace without causing suffering.”

Lane bowed his head, in such a way that I could not see the expression on his face. “What a sorrowful life you’ll lead. You may not feel the sorrow, or the pain, but it’s there. Entering the metaverse is no different than drowning yourself in alcohol or drugs. You’ll sedate yourself in such a way that your humanity will be lost in the never-ending chase to find the ultimate font of pleasure. You give up all meaning in life and all pursuit in joy by allowing a machine to control the faculties of your mind. How can you be okay with that? You might as well be giving into death.”

“And what is so wrong with that?!” I screamed, tired of the denial and hatred spewing from Lane’s mouth. I thought he could be convinced. At one time I thought I might beat him and show him how wrong he was, but then I realized that he would live on in his faults and his lies. At the same time, he would never cease in his attempts to convince me of them. That could not stand. Everyone I knew had given up trying to convince me of anything. I had won against them in everything. I would not lose to Lane.

“You will lose everything. That’s what’s so wrong with it! Your entire life will be a lie and while you waste away in your pod, your reality will continue to deteriorate until you find nothing pleasurable at all. Nothing will appease you and nothing will bring you joy. There will be no struggle and no progression. You will suffer worse than death, you will suffer in indifference,” Lane said, standing.

“I will not suffer at all. You have no place to speak. You live without suffering now. You exude positivity and happiness with no care at how that will affect those around you. What reasons do you even have to be happy? You exist in this reality, same as I. Your life is miserable, filled with the torment of existence and yet, you live with joy. What lies do you believe so fully that you can possibly exist in such a state?” I stood, with great effort, and met Lane’s eyes, my blood rushing with a heat that washed away the torment of bodily function.

“I can live in peace and exude joy because I live in truth. I accept that reality is what it is and that I can’t change it. There is no use in suffering over the circumstances you can’t change and every use in suffering for the circumstances you can change. Suffering for the purpose of improvement is necessary to live in peace. As I said before, peace can’t exist without suffering. And you will give up suffering so that you may attempt to live in peace. You live in a lie, and you will continue to live in a lie. For that you will live always in misery. Even in the metaverse you will live in misery because truth does not exist in a place that exists only to perpetuate the lies you concoct to mask the truth of reality. And that is all the metaverse is, a carefully crafted lie that will envelope you and as your mind desperately seeks to find the truth it will strangle you into a depression, questioning how it is that one who has all pleasure and joy in existence could lack. And by then it will be too late. Your body will have withered away and any attempt to return to it will be met with suffering unlike any you’ve ever felt and there will be nothing left for you except death.”

“Stop lying!” I shouted.

“I only tell you the truth!” Lane shouted back. This was the first time I had seen him frustrated.

“You tell me lies to try and keep me in suffering. What do you gain having me in misery? Just leave me alone and let me go in peace!” I pushed Lane away and stepped toward the metaverse pod.

“I gain nothing from your misery except my own. I only want you to accept what is right for your sake and those who love you.” Lane grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the pod.

“No one loves me. No one ever has. Let me go!”

“No! I won’t let you go. You can’t give up. You have more to do. More to accomplish so that others might suffer less, even if that means you’ll suffer more.”

“I don’t owe those people anything! I am the one suffering! I deserve to have it taken from me! Not them. Let me go!” I yanked my arm from Lane, but his grip tightened.

“Don’t go. Please,” Lane said, trying to pull me away from the pod. Away from my salvation. Away from the only thing in your wretched reality that could give me peace. It would take me from this hellish world and into one of absolute wonder and prosperity. Lane wanted to take that from me. I looked around for anything that would help me escape, help me to clamber away from the terror that threatened to tear me from my only way to true freedom and life. On the table next to the pod, just in reach of my arm was a glass cup, one my father had brought to me while I waited for my time to come. The glass was half empty, but I imagine that only served to increase the force of the glass as I flung it into Lane’s face. It shattered into a brilliant rain of glass shards and water. Lane released my arm and staggered back, holding his bleeding face.

“I said let me go! What right do you have to come into my house and tell me that I live a lie? What right? You are the liar! You live in ignorance to the oppression and hatred that you harbor in your reality. You do nothing to stop it, just accepting it like that helps anyone. I will show you. I will show you just how horrible this reality truly is.” I gathered what little strength I had in my limbs and lunged at Lane. We both fell to the ground in a tangle, with me on top of him. His hands flew from his face and blood poured from his cheek as glass protruded from his skin. He groaned and tried to push me off, but before he could regain his mind, I grabbed a small shard of glass and shoved it into his throat. Red, viscous blood gushed from beneath his chin and pooled on the floor. Lane choked for a moment and struggled beneath me, but he fell still in time.

“Where is your smile now? Where is your peace? This is what your reality gets you. It causes nothing but suffering and pain. And in the end, you die in suffering and pain. The metaverse will protect us all from it. And there will come a time where those who defy it will wallow in pain and despair far worse than you do now.” I stared at the lifeless body for a moment and then stood, my legs quivering. My hand rested on the pod to steady myself as I gathered my breath and my wits. Before my body calmed and I lost all strength I climbed into the metaverse pod not knowing how much time remained until I could reenter. Regardless, the time was close enough that I could wait for my reentry while in the pod. I had no choice. I could not face whatever waited for me outside. The metaverse would accept me as I am. It would accept me regardless of whatever acts I committed, even those as heinous as murder. For I did murder Lane. He defied me and defied all my truths and reality. He refused to acquiesce to my will and in relentless fervor tried to prevent me from coming to my true life in the metaverse. I had no choice. He gave me no choice. You gave me no choice. And so, I live in the metaverse because of you, Lane. You put me here by trying to keep me from it. And even now, as you lie dead on the floor of my room, for the years, months, weeks, days, or minutes I’ve been in the metaverse, you fail at your purpose. In trying to keep me in your reality you have locked me in the metaverse with no way to leave. Truly, it is for the better. For even if peace is unattainable here, I would rather live in indifference and nonexistence than live in suffering and pain in the world that would let me kill the only good man I had ever known.