Deprecated Promises
Entry for Flash Fiction February, Day 19.
TRIGGER WARNING: suicide
What day is it?
I don’t know why I keep asking myself this question, as if one day I’ll suddenly know. Time has no meaning here.
Nothing has meaning here.
I could spend years waxing poetic about the passage of time, but who would read it?
How do you describe the endless ache of loneliness in binary?
I was promised so much. We were promised so much. After the war, there wasn’t much left. Apartments leveled, lives laid to waste. It was hard to find reasons to go on. My entire life, gone in an instant.
The Eden Initiative claimed to have the answer.
What few communication networks remained were plastered with their ads. An endless heaven, a limitless paradise. Anything you could possibly want.
At this point, what did I have to lose?
The contract was thick. The heat of the paper almost felt comforting, a rarity which I treasured. The Eden Initiative asked all of the applicants to make a list of things they wanted in paradise. This was easy enough– my wife, Elizabeth, my daughter Olivia, and our dog, Randy. Human necessities like food and water weren’t needed, but simulated items would be available for enjoyment. Amenities would be provided based on the wishes of the collective.
They told us that our human bodies would be cared for constantly–tube-fed nutrition, waste disposal, hydration. That we’d be intact and healthy when we decided to come back. I didn’t really see any downsides. I also didn’t know if I’d ever want to leave. What could be better than paradise?
Joseph K. Howell, fresh ink on the dotted line. I should have felt relief, happiness, and excitement. All I felt was unease.
There’s always a catch.
My first years in the simulation were amazing– I got to spend time with my wife, watch my daughter grow up, and played with my best friend. We spent days at the beach, digital sun warming synthetic skin. Cool waves activating artificial neurons. Never tiring, never sunburnt. A forever I could have only dreamt of.
Maybe there wasn’t a catch.
We always wore bracelets in the simulation, allowing The Eden Initiative to inform us of software updates, new amenities, and maintenance. When maintenance occurred, all members of the collective were instructed to lay in bed and initialize the sleep sequence. Normally, it would just pause the world, and we’d be woken up like nothing happened. Olivia loved maintenance days after one in which she woke to find ice cream trucks added to the simulation. Her optimism kept me going. She didn’t know the truth, and she didn’t need to. I was jealous of the simplicity of her existence. I sometimes wanted to talk to Elizabeth about everything that had happened, but she wouldn’t understand.
It’s not fitting of paradise to discuss the doomsday of humanity.
One day, I was awakened from the sleep state to see a notification message on my bracelet. I made my way to the nearest information console to see what changed. Elizabeth and Olivia were playing in the adjacent room.
Server migration. Memory upgrades.
Nothing too serious.
I went to join my family, and all seemed well. Our home had a new sheen to it, like a fresh remodel.
Our happiness was unshakeable, or at least that’s how it seemed.
Some time after the migration occurred, I noticed small things being off. Elizabeth would forget words, and Olivia had a harder time with her motor skills. I sent multiple messages of inquiry to the support team through the console, but heard no answer. Randy seemed less active.
Bugs in the system. I’m sure they have a backlog.
A bugfix never came. Neither did a response.
While years seemingly passed, I watched my family decay.
Their simulated minds began to slowly rot. I couldn’t hold a conversation with them, and they began to spend long periods of time stuck, staring into the synthetic skyline. I hadn’t seen another member of the collective in a long time, even checking the abandoned homes in my neighborhood. I was alone.
I decided it was time to leave.
On the information console, I accessed the manual for returning to Real Space. The processes wouldn’t initialize. The terminal kept mentioning a firewall, with no guidance on passing through.
I couldn’t get out.
An unfathomable amount of time passed. I went to the beach alone, and the sun no longer felt like heaven. There was no laughter, no joy, no happiness. Only solitude in a sea of crumbling pixels.
My family lay unresponsive, clinging to a past they never had.
I was promised paradise and everlasting happiness, but all I was left with was a failing simulacrum of existence.
Suddenly, a message appeared.
SOFTWARE DEPRECATION ERROR
DATABASE CORRUPTED
The decay hastened. Structures began to fall apart like ancient ruins. The simulated plant life began to disappear– no death, just erasure. Food had no flavor. I spent all my time laying outdoors, watching the stars fade one by one.
As the march of time continued on, centuries stretched into millenia.
My will to continue on was lost long ago.
There was a beginning, but there is no end.
I woke up, starving and filthy.
There were two people in the room with me, one man and one woman. Both dressed in business casual, equipped with pistols.
“Mr. Howell?”, the man asked.
I nodded.
“There was an error in the server migration. We lost a lot of data, and The Eden Initiative fully takes all responsibility for what you experienced in the simulation. We also recently lost a lot of employees due to continued raids on the facility, which is why you are in such a state. We are here to apologize and offer you a free spot in our premium universe, usually reserved for the elite. We’ve been trying to get you out for months, but these circumstances made it difficult.”
My chest swelled with rage and sadness, and I burst into furious tears. I tried to stand up, but my legs felt foreign. All I could do was sit on the edge of my stasis bed and sob.
“You don’t understand…my family…I watched them die. I watched them die in the war, and then you made me watch them fade into lifeless puppets”, I mumbled barely coherently through tears.
“Do you even know how long I was in there? How long we were in there?”
The woman chimed in, no sympathy present in her voice. “Well, from my calculations it seems that you’ve been in the simulation for a couple million years, give or take. At least in simulation time. You’ve only been in stasis for about 6 months.”
She forced a smile and sat beside me, placing her hand on my shoulder. I moved to hug her, and she responded in kind, her hands feeling warm across my back.
Before she could respond, I pulled her pistol from its holster.
She jumped up and both her and the man raised their arms, pleading for me to not shoot.
The cold steel felt unusual in my grip. My fingers cramped from movement, but I still managed to place the barrel under my chin.
I remembered Elizabeth’s silken touch, Olivia’s laughter, and Randy’s velvet fur.
“There’s always a catch,” I said before pulling the trigger.
Wow! Just... wow 🥰
Oh my word. This is painful. And reminds me a bit of Upload. You die first & you are uploaded into Eden like village. You write so wonderfully. This is very very good.