Living Under

The warm breeze punched me while I was harvesting my crop where I then stood to watch the rolling hills of golden blades of wheat swish and sway and glitter to the vicious wind.

“Not all that glitters is gold, but what does sure is beautiful,” I said to myself. I got back to work, slowly slicing my sickle through the swaying crop; laying aside the bushels of wheat to collect. For hours the hot sun bore its generous rays unto my backside, until it had enough to give, and set down for the night. I swept up much of the bushels into a cart, filled it high beyond the brim, and pulled it away to my home. I spent some odd hour threshing a bushel; storing the wheat berries for porridge in morning.

The ceiling of my house was spiraled planks of wood. Slowly turning inward, each right angle moving closer and closer to the center, until a flat square plank was placed centrally. I had built that. It was nice to make something of my own; benefiting every day from the labor I put into it. That’s how I wished the world was anyhow.

“5 MINUTES REMAIN: DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE YOUR SIMULATION?” A red glowing interface appeared before me bearing runic texts. I checked the time on the top right: 4:44pm.

“No.”

“BEGINNING EXIT PROCESS,” The world around me faded to the steel coffin where I awoke and watched the glass split, rise, and free me from the loving embrace of unreality. I looked to my left and by the door Jessica was smoking a cigarette.

“Finally done, Jack?” She asked.

“Unfortunately. “

Jessica took in a big puff of smoke, and slowly let it out. She looked through me, I don’t know what she saw, but her deep green eyes reflected mine; thus felt empty. She opened the door and motioned for me to follow. We stepped out of the Sim-House, or, as Jess liked to call it, the Pre-Morgue.

I whipped out my cellphone, and stared into the black void. Visions of the golden waves flowing across the tops of the grain filled my mind; the simple slicing that brought down the stalks to piles beneath my feet. Buzz. I quickly replied to the text, and for the next several minutes I found myself in a back and forth with an old friend of mine. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Click-screeeech. The door to my home swung before me, and I briefly wondered how I got here.

I looked up very and saw Mother and Father at the table, watching something on their phones. I sat down at the table too, and began to play some city management game. The skyscrapers steel beams truly were a sight to behold; then Jess blew a puff of dense smoke in my face.

“Hey, Jack, could you get up? I need your help with something.”

“Uh, yeah. Just let me finish this real qui—,” SMACK. Jess slapped the phone out of my hand, and glared at me her eyes, no longer empty, but a fire burned beneath them. My fragile world fell on the ground and shattered. I’d had that one for years.

“Real quick my ass, you know how damn long you’ll be on that.” I reached over, gingerly, to pick it up, but Jess kicked it away. My eyes went to hers in search of sympathy, yet none was to be found.

“Come on,” Jessica said. Her rage was one of the few motivations in my life. I got up to follow her, She opened our door, and motioned me forward; before I left, I took a quick glance behind me and saw the unwavering cold and empty eyes of my parents that stared onto the screens on their hands.

I looked around at our front yard, if you can call it that. There was a short bush lining the sidewalk in the front of our portion of the townhouses that lined the city, but beyond that the only notable thing was our stairs. Jessica pushed me along the gray concrete sidewalk, until we entered a dark, dank, and destitute parking garage. She then pulled me into her car. It was bright yellow on the outside, with practically all digital tech removed from the inside. The engine crackled like a fire in the middle of a forest, and she began to drive.

I watched the road around me, buildings on buildings on buildings, yet all of them felt like one amorphous blob of structure. The grass, and shrubs, and trees as green as they were, felt gray and dull to my tainted eyes.

Eventually we arrived at Jess’s house, although, it was fairly easy to spot. Where every house said “ditto,” Jessica’s did not. Her house was painted with a mural of the sunset on a light brown background. I’d been here many times, yet oddly, I hadn’t noticed. We parked right out front, and she led me inside, and sat me down at her wooden table. She looked at me quizzically. Her gaze left me wondering whether something had gone horribly wrong with myself.

After what seemed like an eternity, Jess said, “Did you know we made that?”

She pointed upwards at the ceiling. I saw a bunch of spiraled planks of wood. Slowly turning inward, each right angle moving closer and closer to the center, until a flat square plank was placed centrally. I stared at it, blankly.

I was a statue in that moment, but in my mind I was searching, reaching, grabbing, pulling every book, and every scrap of paper throughout my mind together in an attempt to remember this. The halls of my memory were laden with moss and overgrowth, but I kept pushing onward, the memory was there, surely?

“N-no...” I responded tentatively. She sighed and put her head on her hand, while her elbow rested on the table. Her red hair fell around her face, shaping it and her freckles on her cheeks. Her deep green eyes just stared and stared. She always looked through me, never at me, like there was something beyond my skin and flesh that only her eyes bore witness to. She’d done that ever since we were children, and yet I never truly was used to it.

Scriitch. Jessica’s face and eyes flipped at an acute diagonal, then back to normal again.

I kept searching through the halls of my memory, and stared at the ceiling: When did we make that?

“Hey Jack, are you hungry? You haven’t eaten since this morning. It’s nearly 5:00pm”

“Uh-h.. Yeah, actually.. Whatcha got?”

“How does -Zzzt- Wheat Berry porridge sound?”

My mind was flooded with images of a farm; the rolling hills of golden blades of wheat swished and swayed and glittered to the vicious wind. The walls began crumbling around us; turning to wood in concretes stead. I looked to Jess, and saw her fading.

“Jess?”

“Ye-Zzzt- I -Zzzt-”

“5 MINUTES REMAIN: DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE YOUR SIMULATION?” A red glowing interface appeared before me bearing runic texts. I checked the time on the top right: 4:44pm

“N-”

An arm sprung forth; grabbing my hand and pulling me towards the interface and dragging me across a wooden table, I then looked up, and saw Jessica’s eyes empty, once more.