Peripheral Visions: Someone

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Someone

"Maybe you need a boyfriend," Gabe said.

Lucas waved a hand and snorted dismissively.

"What?" Gabe said. "You're young, you're handsome, you're lonely. Most of all," he added, leaning forward with a grin, "you're bored."

"Nah," Lucas said.

"It would do you a world of good to hook up with someone," Gabe insisted.

"But that's not what I'm into," Lucas protested.

"Fine, so go find true love."

Lucas grinned. "Easier said than done."

"Use the apps. That's what they're for. Use them while you can. They're an endangered species, you know."

Lucas picked up the paper cup and studied the Lethe's Coffee logo. The dynamic pigment embedded in the hemp paper caused the logo to scintillate and change color. Ripples of red chased blue and purple mists across the design, before the whole thing lit up in a sunny shade of yellow. "Our elected representatives spend so much time trying to protect innocents from the evils of dating apps that... oops! Look at that! They outlawed committed marriage between people of the same sex," he said, with some bitterness.

"That's why love and devotion are still the most revolutionary acts," Gabe told him.

Lucas looked up with a cocked eyebrow and a canted smile. "I thought you said casual sex was the most revolutionary act?"

"That too." Gabe tipped his head back and swallowed the dregs of his coffee. The logo on his cup stood out for a moment in a vivid Kelly green hue. Setting the cup on the table and shrugging his arms into his jacket, Gabe added, "Those motherfuckers in Washington have one thing on their minds, and that's outlawing everything that makes us human. Meanwhile, money is speech, corporations are people, and disembodied AI has a right to life."

"Okay, all right," Lucas chuckled. "It's too early for dudgeon." He hadn't even wanted to pursue his angry remark a few moments ago.

Gabe saw things differently. "Once I've had my coffee, it's dudgeon o'clock." But then his sour expression dissolved into a grin. "Gotta go," Gabe said. "The salt mines are calling."

Lucas lifted a hand in a lazy half-wave and watched Gabe exit the coffee shop. He spared a glance around to see if anyone might be waiting for a turn at their table, but no one seemed to be angling for it, despite the busy morning. Like Gabe, everyone was on their way to work. Lucas should be on his way too, for that matter.

But he wanted to stay right where he was for a moment more. There was something fulfilling in the day's springtime light, and in the soft and fragrant air that wafted into the shop every time someone pushed the door open, a kind of happiness and completeness about the workaday life that lay just outside the window; people on their way to work or school, people sauntering or walking briskly. Above it all hung a crisp blue sky, and leaves of early springtime green stood out on the trees.

Lucas turned his attention to the interior of the coffee shop once more, and found himself watching a couple of college kids – a boy with wavy dark hair that fell in long tresses to his neck, and a blonde girl who giggled at the things he was saying to her. He looked to a different corner of the shop and saw a red-haired guy in his twenties having a similar moment with a skinny guy of about the same age – a guy with flawless, creamy skin, black hair, and bright blue eyes.

Does everyone have someone? he asked himself. Everyone but me? He'd had the same conversation with Gabe a dozen times, and Gabe – a perpetual playboy and committed bachelor – always suggested the same cure for Lucas' ennui: Sex.

"It's the building block," Gabe would tell him. "The cornerstone. It's where people start."

"In more ways than one," Lucas would pun.

"I mean, with a look you can't see a person's quirks and charms and irritating habits, but you can see if they might be your type, or something close enough," Gabe would argue, taking his theme very seriously.

Lucas supposed that was true. Consciously or not, people were led by their eyes to those they found attractive on a superficial level; and, superficial or not, that was a starting point.

Like that ginger guy over there. So hot.

Lucas had always found himself captivated by gingers, and he knew that was true of plenty of other men as well, whether they were straight or gay or somewhere in between. He's someone, Lucas thought, watching as the ginger kept his dark-haired friend in stitches with whatever story he was telling. Gabe is right. I need a someone. Not just anyone.

It wasn't so easy; it was never so easy. The draconian laws the government was passing wouldn't stop people being who they were and wouldn't stop love from blossoming wherever it took hold. And he couldn't blame the excesses and mendacities of the Theopublicans for his own loneliness. But it certainly didn't help him feel safe or hopeful to know how hard red-faced white guys in a distant city were working to make sure libraries didn't have books that told stories like his own, TV channels didn't broadcast shows that included realistic depictions of lives like the one he lived, and private residences were no longer oases where people could retreat after bruising work days, regardless of whom it was they might share those homes with.

Shouldn't lawmakers at least try to make laws that let people live and breathe? Lucas thought. Laws that gave people a chance, instead of taking their chances away?

Lucas stood up and shrugged into his own jacket. As he'd tried to tell Gabe, he didn't have time or mental energy to go down political rabbit holes; he needed to focus on living his life.

If they'll let me keep living it, he thought darkly, pushing the door open and stepping out into the springtime morning.

***

He succeeded in keeping his mind on things he could do something about. Work was always therapeutic in that way; Lucas loved having a task and getting it done. It was so much better than wrestling with the whys and wherefores of the world's injustices, or sitting with the regrets of a life that that was long, and getting longer, and yet going nowhere.

Still, there came a moment at about eleven thirty when he found himself between tasks and chatting with Marjorie.

"What do you think?" he asked her. "Is life really better when you share it with someone?"

"Oh my God, yes," Marjorie said. "I'd be lost without my Henry." Marjorie was a redhead, Lucas noticed for the first time. They'd worked together for how many years? And he only now took note that if she'd been a guy he might think her attractive, simply based on her hair color?

Well, maybe not. She'd have to be a guy for that to work. Besides, her hair looked like a dye job, a little too firehouse red. Lucas preferred his men to have a touch more orange than red.

"What?" Marjorie asked, seeing how he was looking at her.

"Nothing," Lucas said. "Just one of those moments when things look different. When you feel like you're seeing familiar things for the first time... or anyway, like you haven't seen them before."

"I know what you mean," Marjorie said. "Suddenly, everything's in high definition. Colors are brighter. And sounds are crisper, too. It's like reality suddenly ramps up – like you're right out in the world without that security blanket of random thoughts and worries insulating you, muzzling everything, blunting the edges."

"Uh, sure," Lucas said, exaggerating his skeptical tone. "Okay."

They both laughed.

"I do have those moments," Lucas admitted. "More and more lately. But it's not just a feeling that I'm seeing things more clearly, it's... it's almost like I'm looking through a telescope the wrong way. Seeing everything from a long way off. Somehow here, but not. As if I'm running my body by way of some kind of remote control."

"Like déjà vu," Marjorie said. "I mean, it's different... I know what you're saying, but it always takes me to different mental space, just like déjà vu does. Or those moments of hi-def perception. So weird, so random."

"Until it gets to feeling normal," Lucas said.

"Is that how you feel? Distant? Detached?"

Lucas smiled at her. She looked back at him, concerned.

"I guess I'm a little lonesome," he admitted.

"Then do what you do," she said. "Solve the problem. Think strategically."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, for starters, get off your ass and out into the world. When's the last time you ate something other than a TV dinner or did something more interesting with your evenings than read a book or binge watch that show you like?"

"Yeah," Lucas said. She had a point.

"Life is what you make it," Marjorie reminded him as he headed back to his desk.

***

"I should be doing what Marjorie said, getting out and meeting people," Lucas muttered to himself. "Not sifting through old memories."

And yet, his thoughts had come back to a trip he'd taken when he was younger. He'd gone to Europe. He'd used a cerebrex recorder to take full-sense clips of his nine days in Paris. The trip had stuck with him all these years; through some process of association he didn't understand, he'd be doing a spreadsheet or walking past a certain park or look out a window when the light outside was right, and different images from that trip would suddenly spring to mind.

He'd been having flashes of a certain afternoon, a certain street scene. Now, with the old shoe box in his lap, he contemplated actually revisiting that moment using his old C-gear.

"This isn't your life," Lucas chided himself. "This is taking refuge in your memories. And they aren't even memories of a lost love, just... just the city where those things are supposed to happen."

Still, he had a feeling that if he didn't put his C-gear on and look back on that long-ago day, those images would simply persist. Best to take the stroll down memory lane and get it done with.

Lucas slipped the webbing over his scalp, fitting the comfortable elastic bands over the back of his head, and positioning the VR components over his eyes. This model used two separate VR screens to generate a more realistic illusion of depth perception and a visual field that seemed truer to life, without the fisheye lens-type distortion that single-screen VR equipment sometimes created.

With a sigh, Lucas pressed his fingertips to the webbing over his temples. The embedded activation switches brought the gear to life – its batteries were still good, which he was grateful for since he had no idea how to change cerebrex batteries.

Or did cerebrexes even use batteries? It seemed to Lucas he'd once heard that the devices ran off the electrical fields generated by their users.

In any case, he was suddenly looking at still images of a Paris street: Massive old buildings made of pale gray stone; a matching pale gray sky up above; a sense of humid, cool air. He'd taken these impressions on an April afternoon.

Lucas scrolled forward to the next image. Same street; same pedestrians pressing forward in dark blue jackets and gray woolen overcoats. Scrolling forward again, he saw the same street scene, a second or two later. He went back to the first image and then stepped forward through the next two images once more, watching as a brief, crude movie played out and the people on the street stepped forward in time.

Then he reached an image that was different. Same scene, same crowd, but – all of a sudden – a man standing out from the foot traffic. A tall, red-haired man who was looking right at him as he captured the image.

This must have been why this old sensory reel had been coming to mind. Lucas had forgotten the man, but he remembered now: They had locked eyes briefly on that distant afternoon, and the moment had triggered something in him – some wild sense of hope, or even attachment. He recalled – or thought he recalled – musings about that man; who he was, what he did; who he loved. How he might have loved Lucas, if things had been different; if Lucas had made his way over to him through that crowded sidewalk and said hello...

He didn't remember who had said it, but Lucas thought about a writer recounting having caught a glimpse of a young woman out a train window. That fleeting glance had made such an impression that the writer had thought of her of years afterwards.

OF course, it was all a matter of projection, and of visual impressions that sparked flights of fancy. Pretty much what Lucas had been thinking that morning in the coffee shop, watching the ginger guy.

And the ginger guy in this old cerebrex image... he must have tripped Lucas' hard-wired responses, too.

Lucas looked at the man. He stood out from the crowd in a way that seemed odd – not just because he literally stood above them, being taller than those around him, but also because of the way the light seemed to fall on him. And also because while the people around him were walking in one direction, he was facing in the opposite direction – and standing straight up, not ploughing forward with hunched shoulders, as many people in the image were doing.

And he was looking right at Lucas.

Wait – he really was looking right at Lucas. His eyes were alive. His face took on a new expression – a glad smile. Then he moved.

It was impossible. This was a still image. No one else was moving. And yet, the ginger guy was lifting a hand, giving a wave...

Lucas couldn't see himself, of course, but he responded in kind, lifting a hand to press against his chest – Are you talking to me? – and then asking aloud, "What?"

The ginger guy's grin grew wider, his eyes more excited. His hand still raised, he held up four fingers, then three fingers, then pointed straight to the sky overhead.

Then the image seemed to blink and shudder, and the ginger guy had resumed his previous position – his previous lifeless, frozen position, one man among hundreds on a buys Paris sidewalk on an overcast April day.

Lucas watched to see if the man would come to life again. He didn't.

Lucas slipped the gear off his head. The cerebrex automatically shut itself off.

Was it possible for an image to mix still and moving elements? What this some kind of defect in the cerebrex's processing or playback?

The cerebrex was cloud-enabled; the images could be stored externally. What if the guy in the image had been using the fancier, more expensive contact lens cerebrex equipment with a wireless processing box? What if that guy had been looking through his old memories at the exact same time and the devices had connected up somehow, bringing his image to life?

No. That explanation didn't make any sense. But neither did what Lucas had just seen.

But what if that guy and he really had just managed an exchange in real time? Lucas was sure the technical explanation he'd invented was wrong, but that didn't mean there wasn't a technical explanation that made perfect sense, no matter how unlikely it might be.

Had the guy been trying to tell him something with those gestures? Four dingers; two fingers; pointing straight...

"Up!" Lucas said aloud. "Holy shit. 43-Up!"

***

It was a dating app like the ones that Gabe liked to use. Evidently, it was geared toward men over the age of forty – or, given its name, forty-three. Lucas had never used it and never even thought about using it. To the extent he had ever had a thought about 43-Up, it was to wonder why the app used the same name as an old documentary – again, nothing Lucas had ever seen, but he'd heard about it.

Like most dating apps, 43-Up operated in the Extended Metaverse. It was necessary to use cerebrex technology to fully enter the EM, but would his old cerebrex rig do the trick? It had been years... really, decades... since he'd bought this old unit, and he'd never upgraded its software. He might not be able to access the EM using this old equipment; he might need to buy a whole new rig. How expensive would that be?

Feeling he was getting ahead of himself, Lucas took a deep breath and focused on calm.

"If I saw it, then it means something," he told himself. "If he really did ask me to connect at 43-Up, he'll he waiting for me... probably right now. But for how long?" Then Lucas asked himself another, more pressing question: "Did that even happen? Did I really see him? Who is he? Why would he want to meet?"

Lucas stared at the old cerebrex rig for long moment, reasoning his way through the problem. If the man was real, he'd be waiting at 43-Up. If not, then no one would be waiting for him there.

His cerebrex might or might not be equal to the task.

But if he didn't even try, he'd never know.

Lucas slipped the cerebrex over his head once again.

***

43-Up was easy to find on the App Roster. Once he authorized the app, his bio-key did the rest; user accounts and passwords were as extinct as old-style hackers... though, given the odd nature of the ginger guy's invitation, there was always the risk that modern hackers might be luring him into some sort of trap. Lucas had heard horror stories of unwary people venturing to dark corners of the EM only for their minds to be pillaged, or being sent on electronic psychedelic freakouts, or even murdered with feedback surges that caused cerebral hemorrhages.

In fact, the newsfeeds had talked about spiking incidents in which gay men were lured to just such fates in high-tech hate crimes.

Was he about to be cyber-murdered by anti-gay bigots?

He'd find out soon enough. The app was unfolding around him in virtual space. Some users opted for real-time windows in which their avatars could be observed; others chose less bandwidth-intensive, and therefore cheaper, methods or communication.

The old cerebrex showed partial, frozen images of the real-time windows, which was all it could manage. But it had no problem with the neon graffiti that more budget-conscious users resorted to: Messages stretched and scrawled themselves on what looked like an ordinary brick wall. Above him, neon signs sputtered higher on the wall, spelling out messages of their own. Still higher up, a steel-black sky was lit with skywriting.

If the ginger guy reached out to him, how would Lucas even know it was him?

Then he saw it: A message forming on the wall right in front of him.

PARIS. 2037.

The place and year of when the sense-image had been taken. It had to be the ginger guy.

Then the message twisted and changed:

DM

D.M.? Were those the guy's initials?

Of course not, Lucas realized. The guy was asking Lucas to direct message him.

Hesitantly, Lucas reached out and touched the invitation. With jerky, stop-and-start movement that underscored the cerebrex's outmoded capabilitiers, the wall broke apart and the bricks swam around him, reassembling into a small room.

Was the man about to appear?

A moment went by and nothing happened. A few more seconds ticked by; this felt wrong.

Seized by doubt and fear, Lucas directed a command at the site's AI management: "Let me out."

"Do you want to exit?" the manager's voice asked in his ear.

"Yes!"

"Do you want to bookmark?"

Lucas almost said no, but then reconsidered. He did want to know more, but maybe later. But would the ginger guy come back looking for him?

"Can I leave a message here?"

"Of course," the manager told him. "You can dictate your message or write it on the wall."

Lucas reached out and pressed a fingertip against the wall. He scrawled the following day's date and specified a time: 18:30.

If the ginger guy wanted to meet him here, that's when he'd be back.

But first he needed to look into uploading security precautions on his cerebrex rig – or getting a whole new cerebrex with modern processors and software – in order to be certain that the meeting would be safe.

***

"You almost met up with a stranger in a sex app chat room using your old cerebrex?" Gabe asked him the next morning.

Gabe was drinking his usual blend of dark roast. Lucas, feeling jittery enough, had opted for a Zen Chai. It was a good choice; the drink's vanilla and cinnamon were soothing his nerves.

"What model is that old thing, anyway?" Gabe asked.

"It's, I dunno. A Sony, I think."

"Yeah, but what model? What are the specifications?"

Lucas laughed. "2036. I bought it just before my trip."

"Jesus, that thing is..."

"Thirty years old," Lucas said.

"More than that," Gabe said. "Like, twice as old as that."

"Dude, I'm sure I'm not even that old," Lucas told him.

"Anyway," Gabe said, reaching down to pull his courier bag off the floor and into his lap, "you're gonna need something with a little more juice."

"And a lot more in the way of safety features," Lucas said.

"For 43-Up? Naw. You'll be fine. Hackers and bashers haven't cracked their security. It's very solid. But if you want to meet the guy... I mean, he was probably there already, and your unit didn't have the processing power it needed to connect you. So, use this." Gabe fished his own cerebrex out of the courier bag and offered it to Lucas.

"No, man, I can pick one up after work."

"Yeah? And get it formatted and everything in time to meet him at... what did you say? 18:30? I don't think so."

"Won't I have to format yours anyway?"

"No, it's set up; you can access it using you bio-key once I give you access."

"How will you do that if I'm using it?"

Gabe rolled his eyes. "With my PCD."

"You can do that?"

"You're such a Luddite. Of course I can!"

"I don't think my PCD could..."

"Your PCD is like your rickety old cerebrex. Ancient tech. A dinosaur. Jesus, that thing is barely any better than an old cell phone." Gabe shook the cerebrex at him.

Lucas reached over and took it. "Okay. So, how's a Luddite like me supposed to figure out how to work this thing?"

"Just put it on, and then it's pretty obvious."

***

Lucas was on pins and needles all day. It took enormous effort to keep his mind on work, and by the time the day drew to a close he felt exhausted. He hoped that running Gabe's PCD wasn't going to tax him too much further.

He stopped by Marjorie's desk on his way out of the office. "Hey," he said.

She looked him over. "Howdy, stranger," she said. "Haven't seen much of you today."

"Oh, I've been busy with..." Lucas shrugged. "Busywork. And also, got a hot date tonight."

"You do?" Marjorie's face lit up. "Good for you, hon! It's about time."

"Yeah, it hasn't been that long."

"Sweetie, the whole time we've worked together, I don't think I've ever known you to have a date."

"It's been a dry spell, I guess."

"That's an epic dry spell."

"So, a couple of years..."

"A couple?!"

"Well, I mean... okay, I've worked here for, what? Eight years?"

Marjorie laughed. "Are you serious?"

"Maybe nine?"

"Try a higher number, hon."

"Um... it couldn't be longer than that. Ten?"

Marjorie shook her head, smiling.

"Twelve?"

"Did you really lose track that bad? I guess so... well, I mean, I guess it happens. I mean, not everyone feels a need to keep track of time anymore. But still. Eight years? Twelve years?"

Lucas stared at Marjorie, puzzled, and shrugged.

"Hon, it's been more than sixty years."

"It's... what?" She couldn't possible have just said what he thought she'd said.

"I know. Shocker, right?"

"But that's not possible."

"Oh, but it is," Marjorie told him. Then, leaning back toward her terminal, she called up a new screen, entered some instructions, and then sat back with a grin. "One of the perks of working in accounting," she said.

"What did you do?" As Lucas asked the question, he felt his PCD vibrate with an incoming message.

"I just emailed you a summary of all your pay statements, from last week all the way back to when you first started at Lethe Financial."

"Okay," Lucas said, taking his PCD out of his pocket. "Let's just check this out. Sixty years, huh?"

"Let's talk about it tomorrow," Marjorie said, waving him off. He noticed her fingernails were painted the same shade as her dyed hair. "I'm behind on the day's quota, and I've gotta get out of here in twenty minutes or less. Got a roast to get cooked for dinner. Henry's invited his brother and his brother's bitch wife." Marjorie shuddered. "God. I'd rather spend the night with debit columns. But that's married life... compromises and comforts." She threw him a grin. "Have fun on our date. I wanna hear all about it tomorrow."

His PCD in his hand, Lucas walked to the elevator. The 36-story ride to the building's street level was brief, but he had time to open the email Marjorie had sent him and scan the summary of his pay records. As Marjorie had said, it spanned more than sixty years... sixty-two years, five months, and fourteen days, in fact.

It didn't seem possible. How had that much time gotten by him?

***

The question came back to him as he sat in his living room and pulled Gabe's cerebrex over his head. The device fit perfectly, its webbing the same as that on his own outdated model. Unlike his device, Gabe's cerebrex used a single screen, but it was curved and as the image of the main menu formed – a sunny beath with golden sand and rolling waves, with a bright blue sky distant clouds – there was no distortion. The scene looked entirely real.

"Ready?" the vocal prompt asked.

"Ready. Take me to 43-Up."

The image shifted to the same environment he'd been at before. It was either an alley or a dance club with narrow space and high brick walls; either would do, he supposed. "I have a bookmark," he said. "Take me there."

As before, the bricks split apart and surrounded him, forming a room. The process was smoother and faster by far now that he was using Gabe's more modern, more powerful cerebrex.

The ginger guy was already there.

"Hey!" he said.

"Uh – hi," Lucas said.

The ginger guy looked at him, his eyes bright, a huge grin on his face.

"You certainly seem happy to see me," Lucas offered.

"I..." The ginger guy suddenly seemed downcast. "You don't remember me, do you?"

"I remember you from that photo I took in Paris."

The ginger guy, his face still overcast, nodded.

"I mean..." The moment seemed to be turning into something unpleasant. Lucas wondered if he should simply jump out of the VR space. "I mean, I thought about that moment sometimes. I thought about.... I thought about you. If you're the same guy in the photos, that is... I guess a lot of years have gone by since then..."

The ginger guy sighed. He seemed profoundly disappointed. No... no, he seemed sad. "More than you know," he said.

"Yeah, I guess it happens kind of a lot. Ever since the immortality treatments... who thinks about time anymore? It's not like we have to worry about being dead in a measly thirty or fifty or eighty years." Unless our government decides to do what old age no longer does, and kill us off, he thought in the back of his mind.

The ginger guy nodded and then his smile came back – slowly, by degrees, but steadily, brightening up his face. "I didn't mean to pull the mood down," he said. "In fact, I wanted to ask you out to dinner."

"Dinner?"

"You know. When people meet. In person. When they sit at a table and talk and enjoy a nice meal."

"You want to ask me to dinner?"

"You do eat, don't you?"

"Sure..." Marjorie would say otherwise. She made fun of his TV dinners, but honestly, food had never interested Lucas that much.

"Will you accept my invitation?"

"Well, hold on, do we even live in the same city?"

"We don't, but as it happens, I'm here on business."

"You are?" This sounded too convenient not to be suspect.

"It's why I was looking at some old photos. I got bored. I came across that picture in Paris... I was using a cerebrex too, that day. We must have been sense-recording at the same moment. And then, decades later, we both ended up looking at our respective recordings at the same time... I mean, the AI manager that downloads content from the cloud must have automatically hooked us up in real time. Pretty freaky... I didn't know that could happen. But I'm glad it did, because... maybe this is the same for you, but I thought about you a lot after that fleeting moment."

"So that's really what happened? We were both accessing the same images on the cloud?" Lucas chuckled. "I wondered if that might have been what happened. But why would that allow us to interact?"

"I can explain that to you," the ginger guy told him. "I'm an EM engineer. There are all sorts of functionalities and features that you might not know about."

"I'd get lost in the technical jargon," Lucas said.

"I can make it simple if you want to hear about it," the ginger guy said. "Although I find the coincidence much more intriguing. And not just that we were looking at images with nearly identical time- and geo-stamped coordinates; that we were two American tourists taking cerebrex recordings on that same Paris street in the first place."

"I'd be interested to hear your jargon-free theories about either the technical or the karmic events." Lucas hesitated. "So... dinner it is. Where shall we meet? And when? And how will I know you?"

"You'll know me because this is what I look like."

"Oh. You didn't upgrade your avatar?"

"Why bother? It's not like I'm on this app much. Or, ever. As for where and when... you know Exile Bistro?"

"Sure. I mean, I know of it."

"Tomorrow night? 19:30?"

"Tomorrow?"

"I have some meetings and things tonight. Work I have to get done. Is that all right?"

"Sure," Lucas said, a little disappointed despite not being sure that this was at all good idea.

"Once I have this work done, I'll have tomorrow night completely free," the ginger guy said. "It'll just be us."

"That sounds good," Lucas said. "But can we make it 20:00?"

"Sure," the ginger guy told him.

***

"Why? What do you have to do until then?" Gabe asked, fingering the webbing of his cerebrex and looking enthralled with the story.

"I don't know. I just suddenly felt like I should be more proactive somehow."

"By putting him off to a later time."

"Just by half an hour."

"Still. Total control move."

"Yeah," Lucas agreed. "I mean, I do feel a need to exercise some control. I feel like this whole thing is getting away from me."

"No kidding. You meet some guy off a postcard..."

"Photo. I took it myself."

"...and he asks you to go on a dating app, which you have never done in your life, despite me telling you for years that you ought to go get laid. And now he wants to meet in person."

"You haven't told me for years."

"Dude, it's been more than years. It's been..."

"God, please don't tell me sixty years."

"What?"

"Turns out that's how long I've been at my current job. I thought maybe right or nine years. But sixty-two?"

Gabe shrugged. "Time gets by you. That happens to me, too. But in this case, I know for a fact I've been telling you for at least twenty-four years to get on a goddamn dating app and quit bending my ear about being all on your lonesome."

"You've been keeping a chalk mark tally or something?"

"That's how long we've been meeting for coffee every morning."

"It... it is?"

"Look, you want me to come with you tonight?"

"What? No. You think I need a chaperone?"

"I dunno... meeting in person? Bashers can't get you in a secure app like 43-Up. But a real-world place? Even a posh restaurant like Exile?"

"Is it posh?"

"Let's just say he'd better be paying."

"I look at it this way: I've been working for more than sixty years at a job that pays pretty well, and – evidently, from what everyone tells me – I never do anything fun. So, I'm betting if I check my accounts, I'll find I can afford even an expensive dinner."

Gabe nodded, looking unusually solemn. "Just be careful," he said.

Lucas paused, his paper cup midway to his lips. The logo danced with colors. Suddenly, it glowed orange, casting a cheerful light on his face. "I will," he said.

***

There were several small groups of people waiting in front of the maître d's station when Lucas got to Exile Bistro. Glancing to his right, he saw a short corridor – dark wood paneling, tasteful sconces – and a small, tasteful sign identifying the restroom. Slipping away from the line, he made his way to the restroom. A young woman with short-cropped, dark blonde hair came out just as he got there; he stood back and let her pass, then he stepped into the room. He didn't need to pee or anything; he was suddenly overcome with doubt about his looks, even though he'd checked himself over in the mirror at home a half dozen times before leaving.

He checked himself over anew and saw nothing had changed. He was still himself; no lines or wrinkles, no gray hairs, nothing in his teeth, no lint on his shirt. He looked good.

Leaning forward to examine himself still more closely, he thought: Sixty years? Twenty-four years? How much time has gone by? How old am I? How did I lose track? Is it really as commonplace as they say? Or is something wrong with me... time catching up to me at last?

There was no telling at this point, and nothing he could do about it anyway. His own image stared at him from the mirror, neither old nor young: Affable, tolerably good looking, plain in pretty much every respect. But is image also seemed impatient.

"Get on with it," Lucas whispered to himself.

More people had arrived to line up by the maître d's station during his time in the restroom, so Lucas had to wait all over again.

Except, he didn't. The maître d' looked up, then craned his neck to see around the people crowding his station. Seeking out Lucas' eyes, he asked, "Lucas D'Amato?"

"Yes," Lucas said.

"Your party is waiting for you," the maître d' said, and nodded briskly to a waiter.

"My party?"

"Please come with me," the waiter said. He was dressed in livery – white trousers and jacket, red trimmings, gold buttons. Even white gloves.

Lucas let himself be escorted through a luxurious dining room, filled with elegant tables and more elegant patrons. Many of the men were in formal tuxedoes; the women were in splendid gowns. Well, Lucas realized peering closer at one table, a few of the women were in tuxes, as well. The women he was staring at gave him a cold look in return, no doubt thanks to his own outfit. He'd dressed in his best, but his best was a business suit. He imagined that everyone must be looking him over and shaking their heads at his lack of proper attire.

The waiter led him to a table where the ginger guy sat – and, as promised, he looked exactly like himself, even though he, too, was wearing beautifully-tailored clothes. Not a tux, thank the gods. But Lucas wasn't focused on his wardrobe; the ginger guy's face was exactly as in the old photo, and as his avatar appeared in the EM.

He must have been a fanatic about proper skin care between that long-ago day in Paris and the advent of anti-age therapy, which had taken place almost thirty years later. The cure for senescence stopped people from growing old and restored them to an ageless appearance, but it didn't make them young again. The ginger guy still looked about 24 years old.

He moved like a young man, too, getting to his feet in a single fluid movement that somehow enabled him not to nudge the table with his legs. He looked like he was about to hug Lucas, but then he held out a hand. Lucas shook it.

"Hello," the ginger man said, his grin and bright eyes and tone of voice betraying the formality of the handshake.

"Hi," Lucas said, awkwardly settling into his chair with the waiter's help.

The ginger guy waved the waiter off and seated himself. Then he turned to Lucas. "I'm so happy to see you," he said. "It's been so long, and..."

"And?"

"And... just that. It's been so long."

"Since that day in Paris?"

The ginger guy chuckled. "That, too."

Lucas stared at him, still fascinated with how young he appeared. Lucas himself looked neither old nor young – at least, to his own eyes. Then he glanced around at the nearby tables and had the same thought about the others in the restaurant. They all looked impossibly young – unless they'd started taking the anti-aging treatments while still int heir early twenties. That was possible, he supposed. It was also possible that they were so loaded they could afford superbly high-end plastic surgery.

"Something up?" the ginger guy asked.

"Feeling self-conscious, that's all. It's not every day I go to dinner in a such an upscale place. And I'm pretty sure I'm..." Too old for this crowd, he thought. "Under-dressed," he said aloud.

The ginger guy – himself wearing an easy-looking blue blazer, light blue shirt, and creased trousers, all of which, Lucas now saw, looked soft and expensive and weightless – shrugged. "I'm sure no one cares."

"I'm sure that's all they care about, and they're all judging me," Lucas said.

"Okay," the ginger guy admitted. "You're probably right."

"But screw 'em," Lucas said.

The ginger guy smiled. He gestured at a bottle of red wine – the label was fancy and in French; it was sure to be costly – and said, "Shall we drink a toast to that?"

A million questions swirled through Lucas' mind as the ginger guy poured the wine, not the least of which was: "What's your name, by the way?"

The ginger guy glanced up. "Oh." He turned his attention back to the bottle in his hand and finished the pour. Then he set the bottle to the side and picked up his glass, indicating with his eyes that Lucas should do the same.

"Screw 'em," they both said at the same time, and sipped at the wine, smiling at their toast.

Then they both set their glasses down.

That moment of comic synchronicity behind them, the ginger guy smiled at Lucas. "My name's Russell."

Suddenly, a moment like the one Marjorie had been describing the other day came flooding over Lucas. Everything seemed to assume a hard focus; the light in the room seemed to become more lucid and intense. It was like déjà vu, just as Marjorie had said, but times a thousand: As if he was seeing not just this moment all over again, but every moment of his life, all at once.

"You look like that wine just hit you hard," Russell said.

"I..." Lucas looked at Russell. Levers stirred in his mind. Veils rippled, parted, fell away.

"I know you," he said. "Russell... Rusty?" He said the name with the force of sudden recognition.

"Yes," Russell said, his grin back again.

"Rusty!"

"Yes." Russell beamed at him, and his eyes grew wet.

"You're... you're my..." Lucas didn't know the word he wanted.

"Husband," Russell said.

"You're my husband?"

Russell reached across the table and Lucas grabbed his hand. All at once, for the first time he could remember, he felt... right. Whole.

"I don't understand what's going on here," Lucas said. "I'm happy, but... I'm totally confused."

"What do you think is happening?"

"When we first spoke – there was something in your voice, something that excited me," Lucas said. "Something that told me we already knew each other. But I didn't think we'd ever met. All I knew was that you were in a photo I took... in Paris... is that where we met?"

Russell laughed softly. "No, not in Paris. But we did meet, a long time ago."

"In another life? Is this some kind of memory from another life? Have we been reincarnated or something?"

"Something." Russell suddenly, gently slipped his hand away and produced a document. He spread the paper on the table between them. "I can explain everything," he said, "but I need you to sign this."

"What is it?"

"Permission."

"To do what?" Lucas searched Russell's face.

"To... to explain things to you," Russell said, and Lucas believed he was telling the truth.

It still didn't make sense, though. "Why do you need my permission to do that?"

"Because you might not want to hear it," Russell said. "It's not enough for you to consent verbally. You have to agree in writing."

Russell offered a pen – old-fashioned, as elegant as anything else in this upscale place. Mystified, Lucas took the pen and then, without hesitation, he signed the document. I hope I didn't just agree to donate my kidneys after dinner, he thought.

"Now... look at me," Russell said.

It was a long look, the sort that love stories describe with metaphors of electricity. But the current running between them wasn't simply erotic or romantic; it was supercharged with memory, with facts and dates...and with understanding.

It all came back to Lucas: How they'd met in college; how they fallen in love; their wedding and their life together... and then how they aged and Russell had died.

"You remember?" Russell asked softly.

"I remember... everything," Lucas said. "It feels like I've woken up. It feels like I've come back to life after... after a very long time..."

"More than sixty years," Russell told him.

"Sixty? No, let me guess," Lucas said. "Sixty-two years. And five months. And two weeks."

"More or less."

"More or less?"

"You might be an hour or two off."

"Russell? Rusty?" Lucas said. "Where are we? How did we get here? I remember our life. I remember you... you dying. But here we are again, as if you never... as if..." Lucas paused for a moment. "Why were we apart?"

Russell sighed. "My family," he said. "They couldn't break the contract we signed with Lethe, but they did manage to get you assigned to a different Realm Code."

"Lethe?" The name of the company Lucas worked for. The name of the coffee shop. In fact, now that he thought about it, the name of just about every corporate entity he'd ever heard of.

"A digital afterlife," Russell said, as if that was supposed to explain things. "We intended to be here together. They sabotaged our plans."

"Wait, so we're... not really here? This is a dream?"

"This is a virtual world."

"Like in the movies."

"Better than the movies," Russell said. "But not impossible to game. The system is memory-adaptive and forgets certain things after a while, which means you forget them, too. I paid extra for a perpetual archive. You didn't think you would need to sign up for those extras, too, since we'd be together, and I could transfer any memories you might lose track of. It was one way to economize on the cost of the service. And also, we thought it might be fun... we'd make a game of sharing our recollections, remembering our shared experiences from each other's perspectives. But my goddamn family knew that if you were assigned to a different Realm Code – and not with me – that you'd forget."

"We're dead?" Of course they were. That was what Russell was saying. But Lucas couldn't make the idea make sense.

"In a sense," Russell said. "In another sense, we never lived. We're digital copies of people who lived a long time ago. We're what's called 'psy-clones.' "

Still not making any sense. Lucas shook his head, feeling like everything was unreal – the room, Russell, himself.

If he was understanding in even the slightest, that was actually an accurate impression.

"It took me forever to find you," Russell said, "but I knew that you'd still have access to the memories we chose together. I knew if I entered those memories I might find you, if you were accessing them at the same time."

"The... the cerebrex photos?"

"Right, exactly. And it took me all this time to make that work. You see, I died about eight years before you did. I've been waiting for you ever since. When so much time passed that I knew you had to have died also, I wondered what happened. Did they not copy you over? That would have meant you died suddenly, and a long way away from modern technical infrastructure. Then I realized my family must be to blame. They're religious fanatics; they don't believe in digital mind-cloning, and they don't believe in..." Russell took Lucas' hand. "In this."

The two stared at each other for a long moment.

"And this... this Realm Code, this simulation they put you in, with its homophobic tinges... I could kill them for this," Russell said at last. "They've always been assholes, but this was just cruel."

Lucas didn't care about any of that. Suddenly, everything made sense, and everything that had been wrong was right. "I missed you," he told Russell. "For so long. And didn't know what I was missing, or why."

"Because you believe in something real," Russell said, leaning forward and pressing his lips to Lucas' hand. Virtual lips? Digital flesh? It all felt perfectly real, exquisitely present and actual. "Not like my family, pathologically devoted to their delusions and punishing everyone else for it," Russell added. "You believe in... us."

Next week, we fix our eyes on a sheaf of papers scrawled with threats and clues written by a mysterious assassin – written, that is, in a language that only man knows... until now.