Interlude One

I woke up in the middle of the night from a full bladder again. Aside from feeling annoyed—waking up to go to the loo isn’t something I’m used to—I also felt fully awake in an instant. I’m by no means a slow waker, but it usually takes me a couple of minutes to get my brain up to speed. Not so this time. Like a light bulb, I was there.

Not wanting to untangle myself from Livia, I tried to suppress the RDSF, figuring my simulated digital bladder wasn’t real anyway. It did nothing. Not nothing nothing; all the false sensations fell away in an instant. The texture of the bed sheet, the fine hairs on our bodies entangling, the wallpaper being not just smooth and grey, my heartbeat, all that faded from my mind. But my bladder’s complaints stayed.

Resigned, I slipped out of bed, Livia was a hugger, but she at least didn’t hold tight. On the way to the bathroom, my eyes fell on the clock just as it ticked over from 5:03 to 5:04. I nearly stumbled over my own feet when I recognised that time. I had woken up exactly 24 hours after the digitisation. Had it really only been one day? So much had happened in such a short time.

But what did that mean? Why did I wake up at this time again? Also, did I wake up 24 hours after waking up yesterday or 24 hours after the digitisation? It only was a small difference, maybe 20 seconds, but it would be a world of difference regarding the cause. Still reflecting on it, I got into the bathroom and sat on the loo. The extra padding had vanished when I peeled off the trousers, for which I was very thankful.

Messing with Max had been fun, but I had no desire to keep that wretched thing. Sure, it was handy for peeing, but if we women had one, there would be toilet paper at the urinal. Not having that on hand, and pantie liners not really being compatible with the whole setup, meant I had to put my skinny trousers into the wash after wearing them half a day. What a waste. Soap, water, electricity and extra wear all mounted up.

Yes, I wouldn’t have to pay for most of that now. Livia was paying the bills. But could I leech on her that way? She wouldn’t mind; she had been generous with money when she needed it for drugs and had to earn it on the streets. Got that from her parents, I guess. They probably hadn’t even bothered to transfer the utilities to her.

But leeching went against my grain. Not that I would refuse help; I had accepted plenty from Elisa and Ernest over the years, but I always treated it as a loan, even if they didn’t. So, living off Livia’s income, considering what she did for it, wasn’t something I’d want to do long-term. Then, let’s amend my nefarious 10-step plan; step 11: Find a job.

My last job had been a lucky strike. Getting an IT job as an unskilled worker was like winning the lottery. Even the guys pulling the network wires through the walls had bachelor's degrees nowadays. I could always run a cash register, I had done that as a part-time job when I was 16. And I hated it with all I had. Customers are the worst. That also ruled out waiting tables. Same customers, higher expectations of me not being a rude arse.

Also, going by what the AIs had said, there would be monster hunting in our future. Doing that with a 9-to-5 sounded stupid. I needed something with low hours, a decent payout and some flexibility. Just like what Livia had. She worked two or three evenings a week, depending on the kinds of bookings she got, got a nice cut out of what the guys paid and could get any extras she negotiated, and she decided which bookings to accept with just one or two days of lead time.

Was there another type of job with that profile that didn’t involve whoring myself out? And if not, how could I justify living off Livia’s money when I wasn’t willing to do the same job?

I wouldn’t get to any conclusion now, so I wiped and got up to flush. That was when another thought hit me like a speeding train: Why was I so fucking accepting of the whole digitisation thing?

I should be sitting in a padded cell, banging my head against the wall. I should have argued for hours with Alpha and Gamma about this not being real. With Livia, I could explain it away with memory manipulation, even when the AIs had promised me not to do it. But it didn’t work on me. I remembered things as they had happened and could see fake memories for what they were.

But could I really?

There was another possibility. This could all just be a ploy to get me to willingly spearhead whatever they had planned. That gamification thing, or something I didn’t yet know about.

Had they really killed off all of humanity and uploaded us into their version of the Matrix? I had no proof of that. For all I knew, they could have kidnapped me, and everything around me was a simulation. Or a magically induced dream. ‘Think horses, not zebras’ doesn’t really apply to aliens and magic.

I wanted to bang my head against the wall, but Livia was sleeping on the other side. How had I been so trusting?

On the other hand, could I really afford to distrust my memories? And where would that stop? Should I distrust everything I remembered? Should I assume I wasn’t Jane Asterfield-YiLong? I could have been some middle-aged guy jerking off to pee porn. Wipe his memories, put a bunch of fictional Jane memories in instead, et voila.

Assuming my memories were fake could lead nowhere. But stupidly trusting everything the AIs had said, even about themselves, was dangerous. I would need to keep my eyes open and question everything. Just not while it was happening.

With that in mind, I sat back down and combed the last four weeks for inconsistencies. I had my last day at work on Thursday, the 31st. Dropped off my badge and keys, chatted with the guys, forgot to swap my tampon mid-day because of that, which put me in a panic on my way home, which made me take the bus to my flat I had returned the day before instead of the cheap hotel room I had for the one week of August I was staying in London. The landlord wanted the key at noon, and my workplace was an hour’s bus ride away. So, I had to arrange some juggling and move out 2 days early. That was another 60 bucks down the drain.

That checked out so far. It was fully detailed, and I remembered some stuff I wouldn’t have thought about putting into fake memories. Not that I could judge by my own skills, but it at least was a start.

There only was one thing that did not check out at all, and it was a biggie. I could not remember why I had travelled to Liverpool on the 7th and not the 1st. There just was no reason for it, but plenty against. Both my lease and my work contract ended on the 31st. There was nothing that held me back. There also wasn’t a reason I couldn’t arrive earlier. Livia was living and working the same a week earlier. So why had I told her I’d arrive on the 7th? It wasn’t even some long-set date, I had called her with the exact date in mid-July.

I wrecked my brain for maybe half an hour to no avail, then gave up and went back to bed.