Part One: Carla

Have you ever met someone who is too perfect?

So perfect that you kind of want to hate them but you can’t because they are, in fact, too damn perfect?

Okay, let me take that back, maybe hate is too strong a word. Let’s go with unfairly dislike. I’ll just say that if somehow, someday, I find out that this person was actually not that perfect, like maybe they’re harboring a secret skin condition or something, I would be relieved and admittedly even a little bit elated.

What I’m saying is: I really, really don’t like my brother’s girlfriend Annalise.

I’m not proud of it. I just can’t relate to her.

Don’t get me wrong, she has been nothing but the model potential future sister-in-law to me. She’s polite, she’s funny, she never oversteps her bounds. She even managed to charm my usually ice-cold mother which is an impressive feat in and of itself.

Oh, did I mention she is also drop dead gorgeous? Like, so unnaturally beautiful you want to keep staring at her but you can’t because it would be too creepy after a certain point? She has this really thick dark hair that glints like a freshly shined shoe, and cat-like silver-blue eyes under lashes so long you almost think they’re fake (they’re not). Also, she’s a runner (of course she would be) so she has that really lean runner’s body with hard abs and long legs. Somehow, of course, even with all that cardio, perfect Annalise manages to keep her boobs to balance out her twenty-two inch waist.

With those stats you’re probably thinking she must be an airhead instagram model or some such. Nope. She’s studying to be a clinical psychologist. Her parents are both doctors or something like that. So yeah, she’s smart too.

It’s not fair.

My brother, Jake, is of course head over heels in love with her. So is mother, actually, maybe even more than my brother.

“Annalise!” My mother would coo enthusiastically every time we all got together. “You look stunning! I love that outfit. How come you can eat so much and not gain an ounce? Oh you’re training for a triathlon? How fun! How’s graduate school? Wow, I don’t know how you do it all. My son sure is lucky to have you. Oh you baked us cookies! You shouldn’t have! Oh, oooh. They are delicious!” Eventually my mother would happen to look in my direction and be obligated to give me a perfunctory nod. “Oh, hi Carla.”

You get the point.

I asked my brother right after I first met Annalise: “But seriously, Jake, don’t you think she’s just a little too good to be true?” and he just shook his head in that amused way when he thinks I’m making a joke.

I wasn’t joking. There’s something not right about Annalise. Everything about her is too good, too perfect, almost… rehearsed. Jake just can’t see it because he always assumes the good in people.

Anyway, having said all that, I’m really not looking forward to having dinner with everyone tonight.

—

Part Two: Annalise

I’ve always hated the phrase “not like other girls.”

It’s one of the things guys always say to me, like they’re giving me some sort of contest prize: you know, Annalise, you’re not like other girls!

Umm, thanks?

Jake likes to say that to me and it gets on my nerves. Oh, I know he means it as a compliment, but of course he’s painfully unaware that it’s low key misogynistic and actually even a little bit insulting, but I digress, it’s beside the point.

The point is, it’s true, I’m actually not like most girls. But not in the way you think.

For one, I’m a little… crazy.

No, not quirky. Not that manic pixie dream girl kind of cute crazy (don’t even get me started on that). No. I’m clinical. My parents even had me committed at one point. It’s the main reason I want to be a psychologist.

Don’t worry, it’s okay, I’ve made my peace with it.

Besides, I’m pretty good at pretending to be normal. It takes a lot of effort, keeping the crazy under wraps, but for the most part, I manage to do it. I probably have no business being in any kind of serious relationship, though.

Jake and I are having dinner with his family at some fancy restaurant tonight and it’s giving me so much anxiety that I ran an extra three miles on top of my usual five. My legs felt like jelly by the time I finished but it did the trick. It calmed me down.

His sister, Carla, is a few minutes early like usual. She is already at the table, with her blonde hair in a ponytail and face completely free of make up. She had on a plain white T-shirt and an old pair of comfortable looking jeans, an outfit which I’m sure she didn’t put any thought into selecting but ended up looking effortlessly attractive and classy. If you look up All-American girl in the dictionary I’m pretty sure you’d see a picture of Carla Marie Donovan.

She’s that generic type of pretty: pleasant enough face with conventional, symmetrical, forgettable features. No, not exotic, like I’ve been told I am (looking vaguely ethnic invites such comments), but pretty. Prom queen of a small town type of pretty. Or a Disney channel series lead. Likable, wholesome, normal. I’m a little jealous, honestly.

“Hey, Annalise.” Carla smiles at me tightly. That was another thing about Carla, I could sense that she really doesn’t like me. To this day I can’t figure out why. I always turn up my efforts to be the perfect friend when I’m around her. I even write down a list of jokes the night before we get together because if there was one thing I noticed Carla appreciates, it’s being funny. Sometimes I do make her laugh, but I could tell she still doesn’t like me. I try to give her the benefit of the doubt. She’s probably just being overprotective of her brother.

To be fair, she probably has good reason to.

Jake. Good old Jake. He’s like the dream Midwestern man. Dependable, classically handsome, and emotionally available. Everything is simple and logical to Jake. Unlike my brain, which weaves and turns like an unnecessarily complicated lattice, Jake’s mind seems to operate in straight lines. If he wants something he goes for it, if he doesn’t, he lets it go. If he loves something or someone, he loves them. Fully. I’ve never had a more stable relationship in my life.

I can’t explain it, but lately, it’s been kind of… suffocating.

It’s really not fair to Jake. After all this time, I don’t see why he’s still with me. Maybe he likes broken things.

I shake the thought away, for now I need to focus. I hug Carla. “Hey, Carla, how are --”

“Annalise!” I cringe at the loud gushing voice of Jake’s mother as she saunters ostentatiously towards our table. “How lovely to see you! What a cute dress, and look at your waist! I don’t know how you keep so tiny! How are you, my dear?”

I give her my warmest smile. When I first met Jake’s mother, she mistakenly said some borderline racist things about some local election, and at some point, when I had to casually mention, “actually, I’m half Indian” she apologetically backtracked and she’s been overcompensating ever since.

She meant well, I actually wasn’t even offended. I just wish she would stop trying to make up for it, I could tell it makes Carla uncomfortable.

I see Carla in my peripheral vision fight to roll her eyes. It would be almost comical if it wasn’t pertaining to me.

I sigh inwardly. I shouldn’t have agreed to this dinner in the first place. Not with what I am planning to do.

It’s my fault for putting it off for weeks. I keep chickening out. Tonight. I’ll have to do it tonight. After dinner.

---

Part Three: Jake

I think it’s fair to say that, like your typical Joe, I don’t understand women. Not at all.

I look at the three women I love most in the world sitting around the dinner table and I fight the urge to scratch my head in confusion like an idiot:

Mom is her usual over-the-top self. Carla is rolling her eyes at everything mom says. And Annalise is a bundle of nerves shaking her right leg under the table not unlike an over-caffeinated squirrel.

I wish I could call a timeout so everyone could just calm down for a bit.

The rundown is this: I am in love with Annalise and tonight I am going to ask her to marry me.

I was running late because I had to coordinate with the servers about when to bring out the champagne. The ring is now burning a hole in my pocket but the right moment just does not seem to come. The atmosphere was too tense.

I really don’t see why. I know my mother loves Annalise, but for some reason she kind of overdoes it when she’s around her and it just makes everything unbearably awkward.

And Carla. I don’t know what’s been up with her lately. Normally she doesn’t have any trouble making friends and getting along with all kinds of people. But around Annalise she’s stiff and even bordering on cold.

And my poor, lovely, Annalise. She’s been more withdrawn lately. She seems to have this idea that my family secretly hates her. Which might be true in Carla’s case, I don’t know. But I’m sure Carla will warm up to her eventually.

“Annalise.” I clear my throat and immediately it gets too quiet. Disconcertingly, I realize I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears. I shake it off. Now or never, Jake. “I just want to say that the last eight months have been the best of my life. You have been an amazing girlfriend and friend.” I move to go down on one knee. My hands sweat as I reach for the little red velvet box in my jacket pocket. “I would be the luckiest guy in the world if you do me the honor of becoming my...”

Annalise starts to have a panicked look in her eyes and the words trail off from my mouth. She looks pained. “Oh, um, Jake… maybe we should…”

I feel a twinge of pain in my chest. No, no, no.

Mom turns pale as a ghost and looks like she is about to be sick. A hush falls over the entire restaurant.

“Oh my god.” Carla cries, looking back and forth at me and Annalise in disbelief. “What is happening?”

I feel lightheaded. Did... did Annalise just say no? I can’t comprehend it. We were so happy, so perfect... weren’t we? I blink my eyes. The walls appear to be moving slightly. The floor looks really close all of a sudden.

I hear Annalise’s worried voice faintly. She sounds far away. “Jake? Are you okay? Jake!”

—

My name is Harper and in six months I am going to die.

I know this because I paid for the privilege. You can do testing for anything nowadays, and apparently your expiration date is one of them.

I had money to spare, I was bored, and yes, I foolishly thought the test would tell me some distant faraway age like eighty-two or maybe even one hundred and two. When I found out my expiry date was in six months, I began to have a really, really bad case of buyer’s remorse.

I went through quite a lengthy denial period, where I thought I could go through the rest of my life pretending that if I just do things exactly the same way and not change anything I would conveniently forget and everything would be fine and dandy. (This was by far my favorite coping mechanism. But it didn’t last. Eventually my anxiety bubbled up and exploded like a shaken champagne bottle.)

Next came an obsessive, defiant, planning phase. Everyday I would think of elaborate plans to avoid death like I could somehow scheme my way out of it. I mean, theoretically, it seems doable. Plane crash? Don’t go on a plane. Car accident? Just stay home all week. Heck, heart attack? Pop three baby aspirins and hang out in the hospital lobby, right next to the crash cart ready to wave a big sign that says “I’m having a heart attack.” Unfortunately the test didn’t provide the cause of death, just the exact time, so I couldn’t really plan in specifics.

Eventually all the planning became incredibly exhausting and I settled into a kind of defeated acceptance. My plan was still not to actively put myself in a situation where I could die, I was not quite ready to submit to my annihilation, but if I somehow still find myself in that situation anyway, I figured I should really work on trying to be okay with that.

So then I commenced on a hedonistic three months where I blew half of my life savings and did literally anything I could think of. I ziplined through the forests of Peru, skydived over the French countryside, drank the best wines and indulged in rich Italian food, snorkeled off the shores of Bali, shopped with abandon while perusing the streets of Tokyo, London, Dubai…

You get the idea.

The most pathetic part of this whole thing was that I didn’t have a family to spend my last few days with. Or close friends, really. My impending death would not be filled with earnest mourning and last minute tearful proclamations of love and reminiscing. Oh sure, my funeral would be packed, but nobody would miss me, not really. As an orphaned twenty-two year old who inherited too much money at an early age, not only was I kind of an entitled asshole, I also haven’t really lived yet. I haven’t fallen in love or had kids, wrote that great American novel, won a Pulitzer, or experienced any of that syrupy sweet stuff life is supposedly made of.

Anyway, that’s why I’m hanging out in the hospice ward.

My friend here is Lucas. He is twenty-nine and has end stage heart failure from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. He described it as his heart being too big - literally but I suspect it's also an accurate description of him figuratively. I befriended him five months ago when I found out I was going to die. And no, surprisingly, he does not have any wisdom to impart about acceptance and healing and the meaning of life. He is very not okay with his young, awesome life being cut short, thank you very much.

He did have some useful information for me though.

“It’s quite experimental.” Lucas warned in an ominous tone.

“Obviously.”

“They usually only accept terminal patients… you know, because of the ethical issues.” He eyed me warily. “But in your case, they made an exception.”

He was adorable. He said that last line like a late night infomercial. Or maybe a used car salesman.

“This is not some elaborate black market scam to harvest my organs, is it?” I raise an eyebrow at him. “I mean, no offense, but you look like you could use a new heart.”

Lucas had to grab his oxygen mask after laughing so hard at that one. The nurse at the station gave me a dirty look.

After Lucas recovered he looked me in the eye. “How much do you have left?”

“Time? Or money?” I joked. The look on his face was not amused. I cleared my throat. “One month. And as you know, money is not an object.”

“Well, one month can give you… at least eighty years in virtual time. So pretty much a whole lifetime, if you decide on it.” Lucas shrugged. “Once you jack in though, there’s no going back. Your clock will end as scheduled and that’s the only way out. Also, it’s totally immersive, so you won’t even know you’re in virtual. It will be like… you’re in a dream but you don’t know you’re in a dream.”

“So I would really believe everything was real? Like I would grow up to be ninety years old and I would actually think I lived all those years even though really it will only be one month?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“How many of the other people will be real?”

“Most will be computer generated. You might meet some real ones, if they are in the same time dilation settings as you. There are very few people with the resources for a whole month, you know. Most people can only afford one day.”

“So there’s a chance that I will marry a program?” I furrowed my brows. “And then if we have kids, they will also be programs?”

Lucas cocked an eyebrow. “There’s a high chance, statistically. Like I said, there’s only a few real participants at any given time. Not that it would matter to you, you won’t know the difference.”

I thought about this. Would it really bother me if I didn’t know? I bet my computer generated kids would be adorable.

His expression suddenly turned serious. “There’s something else. It’s rare, but there are a few cases of people noticing little things not quite right and they become increasingly convinced they’re in a simulation. Which of course is true, but when you’re jacked in and you’re not completely sure if you’re crazy or just being paranoid, it can be terrifying. They call it Simulation Induced Paranoia, or SIP.” He paused. “Participants become really…. distressed.”

I chewed on this for a second. “I still want to do it.”

He looked surprised. “Really?”

“I really don’t have anything to lose.” I replied nonchalantly, like I just decided on a dinner entree. I should probably be alarmed that I was acting so cavalier. Lucas wasn’t exactly giving a stellar sales pitch. Then again, it was true, I really had nothing left to lose. I’ve done what I could with my twenty-two years. Might as well have another lifetime to try again.

Lucas stared at me for a moment then sighed. “That’s the thing. The longer you’re in virtual, the higher the chance you might experience SIP. Remember, Harper, a month is a lifetime. The chances are very low of course - less than 1%, the virtual worlds are very meticulously programmed after all. But if you experience SIP, there’s no cure, no safe word, you’re stuck until your clock runs out.”

“I already decided.” I said resolutely. Once I’ve made up my mind on something I was usually unshakable. It was one of my many flaws. “In fact, let’s do it tonight. I want to get my whole lifetime, not a year less.”

—

Everything was too bright, the sounds too loud. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. Jacking in was a very jarring process, it felt as if all my neurons were firing up all at once. Somehow I felt tremendous pain and the heights of delirious ecstasy simultaneously. Like I was feeling every possible thing all at the same time. There was a terrifying moment when everything went black, and for what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, I truly wholeheartedly believed I was actively dying.

Maybe I was supposed to die on the table during the procedure. Or maybe I really did unwittingly offer to have my organs harvested for the black market. Damn it, I probably caused my own death in my extreme efforts to avoid it...

I blinked twice. The room slowly came into focus.

“Hey, sleeping beauty.” A familiar voice.

It was Lucas. But also, it was not Lucas. He did not have his portable oxygen tank close by. His lips did not have their usual bluish tint. He looked… healthy.

Everything came back to me at once.

“Oh shit, Lucas. That was nuts.” I shook my head, clearing the cobwebs. “That felt too real. I really felt like I was in there for twenty-two years.” I checked my watch. I’ve only been in Virtual for twenty-two minutes.

He chuckled, swiveling back and forth on the expensive office chair I bought him for Christmas last year. My boyfriend never could sit still. “You’re a champ, Harper, you were the one who wanted to push the time dilation to a year per minute. I was worried pushing it that far would compromise the world building, but your mind was amazing at meeting the program halfway to fill in the gaps. You made yourself a rich orphan, really? Money is no object? Hah!”

I disconnected my neurojack from the surgically implanted access port behind my right ear. That rich orphan stuff was my subconscious free at the wheel. I didn’t intentionally decide on it. I turned back to Lucas. “Why did you add all that stuff about Virtual in there, and SIP? Don’t you think that was a little too… meta?”

Lucas suddenly broke into that grin that melted my heart so many years ago when we met during undergrad at MIT. “Well, since you wanted to put the expiry dates into the program so people would know how much time they had left, I thought, what the heck, why not make it interesting? Why not make a virtual game in Virtual?”

I was not amused. Lucas had a penchant for bloated code and unnecessary side doors. Also, for not telling me about an adjustment until after he has done it. “That’s messed up. You should have run that by me. The expiry date was a suggestion from the beta testers and we all agreed on it. We didn’t agree on putting the game into the Virtual Universe as a side door..” I paused. “Also, what if I didn’t jack in? I would have died in a car accident or something?”

Lucas turned back to his computer and typed a few lines of code. “I had carbon monoxide poisoning ready to go, but I was prepared to improvise. And anyway, I didn’t actually think you would gravitate towards the game during the beta test, I just put it in there as an Easter egg of sorts. I figured most clients would only think about jacking in when they were close to their expiry dates, if they do at all. But on second thought, maybe I should take it out of the programming, it’s too much work to keep up.”

I jumped off the table and stretched my legs. My entire body felt stiff like I haven’t used it for months. “Yea, take it out. You’ll have enough work as it is when we start accepting our first commercial clients next week. We have four people scheduled on our first day which I already think is too much.”

“We’ll be fine.” Lucas was now typing more purposefully. “That reminds me, I need to finish debugging this before Monday. Do you mind picking up dinner?”

“Sure.. from that new Thai place again?”

“Sounds good.”

I smiled as I gave Lucas a quick peck on the cheek before I grabbed my purse to pick up the take out. Everything was going well for our start up. It was hard to believe that only two years ago Lucas and I were broke PhD dropouts who took a leap of faith building Virtual from our one bedroom Boston apartment. And now… well, let’s just say our first official month in business is projected to generate six figures in profits even after subtracting overhead. Mid six figures. And as soon as we open up our second and third facilities the growth would be exponential.

To top it all off, I was pretty sure Lucas was planning on proposing to me next week on my birthday. I saw a charge from some jewelry company on his credit card statement while I was doing some filing last month. Judging from the amount, it could only be an engagement ring. Lucas never would have spent that much on a piece of jewelry otherwise.

I sauntered out of the elevator from our high rise office with a pep in my step. The weather outside was just the right amount of sunny. Even the Boston air didn’t feel as suffocatingly polluted. Yes, everything was going well. Perfect, even. I eyed a meticulously trimmed bush suspiciously as I walked by. Maybe too perfect.

I felt a sudden stab of panic. The smile dissipated from my face.

Oh no.