Title: Lake Memoriam #1
Subtitle: A paramilitary soldier uses virtual reality to obsessively relive her
trauma, unaware her emotions are feeding a deity struggling to be born.
2068, Washington, D.C.
The civil war began and ended decades ago, but loyalties still run deep.
Some see emerging VR technology as a chance to tie up loose ends;
others, as a formidable risk to all mankind.
Adrianna Lucas found herself curled up on the ground, smelling dirt. She instinctively reached for the back of her head and felt for wires. Nothing. She knew better than to doubt whether she had entered a dream. Then why did she feel uneasy after having entered the same dream hundreds of times? After beholding the same sky as that night, repeating the same events? Especially when the consequence of failure was death. She flipped onto her back to confirm. The sky really hadn’t changed—a faint purple cloud stretched from one horizon to another, dotted with lights that blinked in unison. If the stars could judge her, they wouldn’t be very forgiving, but any light from Earth wouldn’t reach them for many years. And this wasn’t Earth.
A dark forest groaned around Adrianna. Blades of grass punctured her dress and stockings like many small needles. They didn’t succeed at marking her legs, which were already scabbed over from playing rough in the woods. Everywhere else, the stinging shocked her into grabbing a loose branch for support, the branch pulling her with it. Slivers of moonlight reflected off her arms pocked with blood. How strange. In here, she was only meant to see his blood. The dream was supposed to obey her memories as long as she never strayed far from them, a rule she followed religiously. As such, she had trouble believing the machine would go rogue. Or maybe it wasn’t the machine. Quite a few people held a grudge against her, and the list kept growing.
Adrianna pushed those questions to the back of her mind as she heard twigs snap in the clearing ahead of her. In either case, whatever was in here with her wanted her dead. She broke the tree branch and readied its pointed end. It wasn’t a great weapon, but it was better than nothing. She took careful steps towards the origin of the noise, feeling her nerves gather at the base of her spine. How could she defend herself with a stick against a trained assassin, in the body of a young girl? Murder appeared to be out of the question. Maiming, on the other hand—
Two silhouetted figures shuffled out of the trees in front of her, the taller one slinging his arm around the other’s shoulder. Adrianna couldn’t make out their faces but assumed that they were standing guard. Did this really happen back then, or was it another trick? She tried, in vain, to remember. She knew the dread in her spine would develop into panic unless she moved first. Bracing herself, she charged at the men and plunged the branch into the taller man’s eye. At first, the eye seemed to give, but it didn’t bleed like normal. Then, she watched in horror as the man’s body absorbed her weapon while restoring his eye as it was. Worse, she knew the man: James Welkin, oldest of his brothers. Tim, the youngest, was attempting to carry James somewhere, probably the latrine. Neither of them reacted to Adrianna’s violence except to bump into her.
“Who’zat?” James asked. “I swear that’s,” he hiccuped. “That’s little Angelica.”
“That’s Adrianna,” Tim corrected him, his voice cracking. “How’dya expect to run this place and not hold your liquor?” As they walked past, Tim flashed an apologetic smile at her. “He’ll learn. Tell Violet I said hi, and congrats.”
Adrianna watched them until they disappeared from view. She might have encountered them back then. Her mind had been racing so fast that night that she couldn't nail them down with certainty. In any case, they had never shown up before, and especially not like this.
She quickened her pace until she reached the clearing and discovered—a total mess. Strings of purple plastic roses waved in the breeze, some already fallen and tangled with the beer bottles strewn all over. Charcoal embers burned in the cooking pit next to a table full of dirty utensils. Adrianna took this opportunity to swap her stick for a carving knife, wiping it with the tablecloth. Things were beginning to look familiar; it wouldn’t be long before she found them.
She set off for the next clearing, which she could scarcely make out in the dark. It enclosed a few dozen tents organized in ringlets. During her childhood, the four leaders usually pitched their tents on high ground above the ringlets, one for each brother. Except tonight, one tent was missing. She hoped that the location of the missing tent hadn’t changed either.
----(unrevised)
Adrianna felt someone put their hand on her shoulder. They spoke with a deep voice: “You don’t belong here, in this dream.”
Without thinking, Adrianna turned to slash the person behind her. They stumbled backwards and landed on the dirt, a large gash welling up on their face. Her eyes widened as she realized the mistake she made.
“Why are you here, Desmond?” She asked. Blood poured out over his cheek, sweat making the moonlight dance on his copper-brown skin.
“To do something you’re ungrateful for,” he replied. “But it needs to be done. Or else we could never call ourselves psykers. Right, Adi?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve been reliving this night without remembering the facts. Maybe it was to help you train, or because the truth hurt you. Whatever the case is: you’re fucking everything up in image space, and you need to stop.”
“How did you get in here, anyway? This is a closed circuit. Only Grantwell people have access.” Adrianna shivered, a familiar sense of dread returning.
“Think about it. Did you switch up your daily routine? One thing can set you off, and repressed memories will come surging back…” Desmond’s voice trailed off.
Whatever Desmond was referring to, Adrianna wanted no part of it. After all, she couldn’t have been talking to the real person. That would logically be impossible. Still, he had been her best friend. “If I stab you, will you die?” Adrianna stuttered.
Desmond smiled. “Try it. I’ll be back.”
Adrianna stepped forward awkwardly and buried her knife deep into Desmond’s side. He didn’t react. Then she realized that her side was also feeling wet. She looked down; instead of stabbing him, she had actually stabbed herself.
She looked up again with exasperation. “Who are you?!” She yelled. The dream version of Desmond was already gone.
Adrianna awoke sitting in a classroom chair with nothing on except a thin hospital gown, an IV drip taped into her arm. Looking around, she saw a tiny windowless office covered in plywood and lit by harsh fluorescent lights. She faced a metal desk with a name placard reading "Virtual Reality Division". Adrianna briefly considered the idea that she had died and gone to whatever hell the expired psykers visit before the office door flung open, revealing a short middle-aged woman who leaned on the desk facing her.
The woman pursed her lips. “My name is Eugenia Feng, but I’m sure you knew that.” She was the deputy head of the VR Division from Singapore, Adrianna’s boss. For her to be confronting Adrianna like this, something had to have gone seriously wrong.
Adrianna recounted what happened with the dream and Desmond. Feng’s face gave little indication of her thoughts, but by her tone, she seemed to be none too pleased.
“Let me get this straight, this dream construct of yours—which already violated protocol for consciously using memories—you visited it over 300 times? Why?” Feng asked.
“Combat training,” Adrianna stated flatly.
“Combat training?” Feng repeated, not withholding her disbelief.
“In this memory… I stab someone who is assaulting a woman. More girl than woman, really. She was my mother figure as a child.”
“And I’m assuming this happened when you were a child?”
Adrianna averted her gaze. “When I was twelve years old. But all kids that age view themselves as highly mature. That’s how I got through it.”
Feng paused for a moment. “You know, there’s a reason why we ask RP’s not to construct dreams from memories, especially highly traumatic ones.”
“It causes psychological dependence, or psych addiction.”
“Yes, but not just that.” Feng sighed. “I suppose it’s G-well’s fault for not properly informing you all about the dangers of image space. However, that’s also an industry-wide standard. Ignorance is bliss, so to speak.”
“The dangers? Beyond… psych addiction?” Adrianna was puzzled.
“Sure. Well, virtual, ah, simulacra can arise in the image space whenever human emotion is intense enough. I can get to the particulars later. What matters is that your emotions were so intense that they created a simulacrum of your friend within your dream. For all intents and purposes, these entities are all-powerful and invulnerable. They’re almost like virtual deities.”
“Then, what does that mean for my dream?”
“It means you’re forbidden from any personal image space for a month, because I believe you have become psychologically dependent upon your dream, even if you don’t want to admit it.” Feng stated firmly. “And you can never enter that particular dream again.”
Adrianna nodded with a mixture of relief and sadness. She would never again see purple specks of the Milky Way as she did that night. Then again, she couldn’t fight against an entity conjured by the image space. Psyking already took enough from her as it was; she didn’t want to hasten the time to her expiry.