Settling in and reacquainting myself with the antiquated technology we would be using, I had a flashback of my early days with Bob, over two centuries earlier, which, in turn, led to flashbacks of the old mansion, the basement where we'd started the company that grew to become Virtuality, all of which naturally led back to images of running through the house with my wife, playing naked-hide-and-seek and so many other memories of the all too brief time I spent with her. I needed to excuse myself for a moment and step away. After two centuries, and relationships with dozens of women since, the loss of my wife was still an open wound in my soul that refused to heal.
In many ways, I was grateful it hadn't. The memories of my wife were both agonizing and beautiful. It surprised me how little the passage of time had dulled that pain but how each precious memory of my time with her was worth its endurance. A wave of fear swept through me that time was dimming my memory of her face and body, which had never been a concern before since those were safely stored in the archives of Virtuality. Those included the entirety of our experiences from both our perspectives: every time we'd made love, had angry sex, performed acts of contrition, every time that I'd watched her face as she came, and every conversation and thought we'd shared during tantric sex.
I'd relived those moments in private a thousand times and had the terrifying realization that I might never have access to them again. No photographs of my wife existed except the portraits in the penthouse and above the mantle at the oceanfront estate. There was another that hung in the office of the CEO of The Total Health Institute, which had startled me so badly when I'd decided to return to the world and pay him a visit. That image originated from his memories of her sitting behind the desk that had been his for years. Where he continued to work each day as he had the last that I'd seen him. That had only been days before IT's arrival. But the desk had become hers the instant she'd strode into what they'd finally agreed to call their office, wigless, bottle of Champagne, pulling off her panties, and ordering me to fuck her on her new desk.
He'd had the copies I owned framed and given to me as gifts. My wife and I had no reason to have photographs of ourselves taken once what we captured with our eyes was safely archived by our Magick Hats. And we'd never had the time earlier in our lives, with so many more important things to do. And it was centuries since I carried a wallet. So I wouldn't have had any photographs with me anyway. Then I'd destroyed the Magick Hat I'd been wearing when she'd died, and I'd never thought to keep those I'd worn before, so the images stored there were lost. And now Virtuality was lost as well. So, my only memories of my wife were those retained in my mind, all of which were then nearly two centuries old. So, I had reason to be afraid I was losing her again.
When I from my moment alone, I sat down at the ancient keyboard, hoping I'd wiped the last of my tears from my face, knowing everyone present was aware of the redness of my eyes. But there wasn't anything to do but dig in and begin grinding away to salvage what we could, whatever was left. First, I felt compelled to take a quick peek at Virtuality, so I inserted a new Magick Hat into my nose, another thing I' retrieved from my office at Virtuality. I hadn't resolved the larger problem at hand. I'd been more concerned about protecting myself from what I'd done to others. So, I made the necessary modifications to the coding we'd embedded in the most recent Magick Hat prototypes. I'd planned to put those into full production soon, now too late to help anyone else. But I felt confident that this one of less than a dozen that we'd assembled would isolate me from any harmful intrusions into my mind, but I still forewarned Baby Daddy to yank it out at the first sign of trouble.
He mumbled, "No shit."
There appeared at first to be no glaring differences from what I'd most recently experienced in Virtuality, except periodically encountering something odd, disorienting, or distressing. Then whatever it was that had taken possession of what had been mine recognized my presence and identity. I'd subconsciously decided to name whatever this entity was, IT, since 'malicious AI entity' was too cumbersome to spew out continuously. And IT immediately proved just how malicious it was, rifling through the archives of my memories and torturing me with sick, twisted distortions of them. Of course, IT knew to immediately focus on those memories of my wife that would distress me most. I watched her brutally raped and murdered. I saw her morph into horrible things in the middle of us making love. I watched myself beat and strangle her until her eyes stared back at me in horror before they were forever empty. Then, most malicious of all, I saw of my memories purged from Virtuality, like watching every photograph from my life torn to pieces and then dropped into a fire until none remained.
YOU ARE READING
The Words - An Autobiography
Science Fiction"What if God was one of us?" Credit to Eric Bazzilion, and thanks to Joan Osborne for singing his brain-rattling words. Much earlier, my mother promised that if I applied myself, I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. Then, from somewhere, I r...
