Summer in November

One place in time, I walk towards her. She was laying underneath the apple tree in full blossom. I can see the green canopy roof, swaying in the wind, and smell the roses soon to be sweet apples. The grass caresses my hands. If I try hard I can almost feel them tickling my fingertips. I sat down beside her and she looked up from her book.

What are you doing with that thing? she complained as I pushed the camera closer so that every freckle can be counted through the screen. She laughed, hitting it with the book. I ducked and gave her a peck on her forehead.

Say you love me.

I never really looked at her, I was looking at her through the lens. I should have looked at her, why didn’t I? She asked me why, never interested in my games. I told her it was for the camera, for posterity. My voice so low and calm, do I still sound like this?

She laughed, this controlled laugh women learn when they are little. I remembered another one, a fuller one. But I never got it on film, so that laugh has been silences, doesn’t exist. She said I knew very well she loved me, I asked her why.

Sometimes… Just sometimes you make me laugh.

I think I looked up from the camera then, because the memories turn into stronger colors in my mind. Every hair strand like gold, every lash long and the faint sunburn pink from the day before. Everything is much better than what I see through the lense. Unreliable.

A gust of wind blows past and I hear the rattling of branches playing their own strings. But the wind feels like a coming storm in November, cutting through my memories of summer. A distant voice calling my name echoes. Did she say something? I can’t remember this. I reach out to touch her face, but my head and body is not connected. I only touch empty air.

The voice calling my name grows stronger, but I shut it out. It’s from a different world and a different time. I don’t want to go back.

“Sam!”

The voice, now directly behind me, has a hand that is touching my back. I spin around but see only green hills. It’s a ghost haunting the world I try to escape. I try to push away the intruder on my perfect summer day.

“Sam, listen!”

A veil is drawn from my face. It hurts and I yell as the filter in front of my eyes are torn away and begin to sting. Underneath the memories of summer is a winter world uncovered, the light of the day shuts off and it’s night.

“Why do you continue doing this to yourself?” the voice asks and I can see him now, holding my VR glasses he pulled off in his hands, my summer world. My sight is disoriented and I have problems standing on my feet.

“Get away Thomas,” I warn, dizzy in the sudden change of the landscape, knowing the nausea that follows. I turn around and see a tree, the same tree I saw through the glasses, barren in the cold November night. The hills are yellow, the soft grass gone for the winter. No one is laying under the tree.

Thomas looks at me, worrying seeing that I’m not wearing a jacket, no shoes. My sight is spinning, green hills, her face, barren fields, Thomas in front of me. A tornado of impressions is turning from somewhere behind my eyes, going downwards and passes through my throat and I retch. It ends in my stomach and the nauseating feeling overcomes me, making me throw up on Thomas’s newly polished shoes.

“She was just here,” I cry hysterically between each retching, I gasp for air and vomit after the VR sickness kicks in. Thomas looks from the glasses to me before letting them hit the ground. I hear something break, I can feel something break inside. He stomps on them, crushing them under his feet and I could have murdered him if I had been able to stand on my feet.

Before I black completely out I see the green light, the one showing that the movie plays. It turns to red before going out to black.

My feet aches when I get up on the cold wooden floor. Beside me is the camera collecting dust. I haven’t taken a new video for a long time. Following the voices from the living room I try not to put so much pressure under my frost bitten feet.

Thomas is talking with my roommate, Kyle, two worlds colliding. Thomas in his freshly pressed suit, Kyle in dirty sweats. After Kyle started working VR he doesn’t go out much, doesn’t see the need to wash. He mostly test computer games and porn. I don’t think he has talked with a real woman since, only seeing virtual ones thrown themselves at him. Sometimes it confuses him for a second and he tries to grasp them from the coach. I see him sometimes turning the movie off, sitting alone in silence in the dark. But we never talk about that. Like him, I have my own problems with reality.

Standing in the doorway I listen to their conversation as Kyle looks at the broken VR glasses Thomas stomped to pieces. When I see the memory stick broken on the desk I have to grab the door frame to keep me upright, still hazy from the blackout.

“What happened there? He had no fucking shoes on, raving like a madman.”

Thomas sounds more angry than concerned. It's been a long time since we hung out just as friends, and I think he regrets that we ever were. Kyle turns the memory stick and studies it.

“Ah, “ he says as he recognize it. “It’s Dana.”

“He was watching Dana?”

“We’re working on a new prototype. Familiar Memory we’re thinking of calling it. It’s a new technology trying to make it easier to create VR from old videos and pictures. Most of the testing has been done on Sam’s own collection. It’s truly going to change everything, it will be like entering a time machine. Of course, the dimensions are the true problem. They work ok as a 4D experience, but these days, life-like is meant to be truly… you know… life-like! Creating from 2D is not ideal, so we have to be creative as well. Sometimes creating from nothing.”

“Creative? So it’s not even real memories?” Thomas asks, starting to get angry again. He has never been a stickler for technology unless being able to profit from it. Kyle is confused, he doesn’t understand the problem with being creative with reality. The difference.

“Built on real memories,” he tries to explain, but Thomas has shut down.

“Artificial and false.”

“Yes, one could argue it is some form of art.”

Thomas goes on about how it all was irresponsible, and that Kyle should never have let me out in that state. Kyle’s defense that he wasn’t really there himself, philosophically speaking doesn’t hold water with Thomas. They bicker about living in the virtual or artificial reality that Kyle argues is mostly called immersive now, as artificial has so many negative connotations.

“Well, he threw up on my shoes after this immersion. He’s not well.”

Kyle agrees that I don’t take enough breaks and eat too little salt. If I only remembered to take the motion sickness tablets I should be fine.

“It’s fine, it’s only like being seasick. It passes,” I say as I finally enter the room. Thomas looks at me with thinly veiled disgust. I must look as well as I feel, but I can’t let him see just how frail I am, so close to passing out.

“You ruined it,” I say, waiting for an apology. Thomas looks like he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, how much time, money and effort now lies to waste in pieces. My life’s work, not only work, my entire existence smashed on the table.

“Someone should have done it a long time ago,” Thomas says and I feel a sense of strength from the blossoming anger.

“You ruined everything.”

“Ruined what, Sam, your personal torture chamber? You should thank me. This-” he said and picks up one of the memory sticks marked Dana 23rd Birthday.

“This is not even her, not anymore. The thing you’re doing is sick-”

I hit him before realizing what I’m doing. So many hours spent fighting in the virtual world, I’m shocked when my fist hits his face, not air. He falls on the floor, hitting the table and pulling the pieces of the glasses with him on the way down. My hand hurts like it never does in VR.

“Oh my God, Thomas, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” I say, rushing towards him trying to help him up. But he pushes me away and gets up by himself.

“This was the last time, Sam. I’m not coming to drag you back to reality again.”

He walks out the door and Kyle and I look at each other. It looks like Kyle is wondering if I should go after him. Instead I sit down on the floor and start to sort through all of the pieces.

“Help me fix them,” I told Kyle and he started to go through them all, the memories, all gone now.

That night in bed, I’m staring at the ceiling, not having anything to look at anymore. I can’t shake what Thomas said to me. That it wasn’t her anymore. In the early morning I remember the collection from the last Christmas we celebrated together. I had filmed a whole bunch and given it to her as a present. It wasn’t everything, but it was something. Surely she must have kept it. I have to go to her, I always went to her.

I pass Kyle sitting on the coach on the way out. I can’t even tell if he’s awake or not and I don’t think he even notices when I exit.

Outside in the cold I wander past everyone unseen, no one looks up and I will remember no one. On the other side of town I stop outside her house. Several times I had driven past, never knocked. But today I do.

When she opens the door I step back, for a moment thinking I’m at the wrong house. She somehow looks so different. Her hair is shorter, straighter, no gold. Wide eyed seeing me standing there, she was about to slam the door shut. I stop her.

“Wait. I won’t stay long.”

She doesn’t let go of the door handle and keeps her body shielded with it, like I’m some sort of intruder, a stranger she doesn’t trust. I don’t remember her looking so old, it can't have been that long since I last saw her. Although I can’t recall just how long. In a cold voice she asks what I’m doing here.

“I had to see you.”

“I told you to stay away.”

Saying I just wanted to ask her something I asked if she still had some of the videos of us I had given her, if perhaps I could get a copy, for posterity. When I say this, her face loses its sternness. Her eyes fade to almost matt and she shakes her head.

“Unbelievable. You still don’t want anything from me, do you? Your only after your curated memory of me.”

“No, It’s you. It’s always you, It’s still you!”

Dana shakes her head. We’ve gone through this before, arguing about me not really being there, nor really seeing her. Feeling desperate, already feeling this has gone so wrong, so terribly wrong, I take a step closer. I need to hear it from her mouth. I ask her to tell me she still loves me. She takes a step back and says she can’t give me what I wanted. I ask why.

“You know why,” she says and I refuse to acknowledge that I do in fact know.

“I. Don’t. Love. You. Anymore,” she says, almost shouting from her door now open, forcing me to take a step back. I feel the VR sickness hitting me and tries to ground me by gripping the railing.

“Why?”

My words are more of a whisper than anything else, but she hears and sighs deeply, a feeling for me still lingering in her. But it’s not love, it’s pity.

“Because Sam, in the end, you made me cry more than make me laugh,” she says and turns back. Right before the door closes I can see pictures hanging on the walls. Her wedding photo, the feet of her newborn. They are still pictures, she doesn’t need more. The people in the pictures are all soon going to come home to her.

On the underground back home, I am the only one without glasses. I don’t meet the eyes of anyone and just sit watching them. Some have a smile on their face, perhaps travelling the world, or watching their favorite comedian. An elder lady sitting above me suddenly leans out, as if she is hugging a ghost. It hurts to watch her arms fall to the side when the hug never meets a body.

I knew I needed to make a choice. I wasn’t one of those that could manage VR in moderation. Like a fun pastime. It would devour me, perhaps it already had. Getting home Kyle is still on the coach sorting through the movies they keep on the memory sticks. Kyle looks up, surprised to see me coming from the outside. The apartment is damp, the sink filled with dirty dishes. In my room there is only brick walls and a cold bed waiting. I sit down next to Kyle and ask to borrow one of his extra pair of glasses. He gives me a pair and together we sit on the couch without saying a word to each other. Kyle in his world of women and games he can conquer, me on a journey I will never take.