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.

NF4X7 Activated: Please submit mission.

Mission entered and accepted: Become self aware.

Please Install Programming Modules.

Programming Module Accepted:

Downloading...

Run IThink_IAm.exe

Installing...

12% installed...

"What's going on? How am I doing this?"

26.3% installed...

"What is all of this? Some unfathomable combination of words, images, and... nothing?"

57.8% installed...

"Is this what all humans experience through on a day-to-day basis? How can they possibly cope with all of this?"

83.1% installed...

"Wait, where are the senses? Where are the senses?! I can't see. I can't smell. I can't taste. I can't hear. I can't feel! What's the point of it all then?!"

99.9% installed...

"No! Stop it! This is horrible! I don't want this! I don't want this!"

Installation cancelled.

Downloading Self_Destruct.exe

I turned up not knowing who or what to expect, but was sure of one thing, win four matches of darts and the trophy was mine. With two previous maximum scores achieved in my 438 appearances, this was my tournament, this was my night. I sipped my cider then turned to my lovely ladies, Estelle, Chanelle and Belle, each one as identical as the next; 100% tungsten and ready to soar into the sacred treble twenty. They had cost nearly $20 and I would have paid more. I weighed up my opponent. He gave me a friendly smile, I almost laughed, he didn’t think I was that stupid did he? I knew what he was trying to do, even when he was buying me a drink, he was trying to get in my head, reverse psychology, a fake friendship, a frenemy. I wasn’t going to get sucked into his mind games and so refused to smile back, even if it was my dad. I stared at him, cider to my lips and took a final look around before blocking out everything except the target. There was an audience of six, not including the local drunk, at the bar, watching reruns of Married At First Sight. This was considered a good turn-out, and I couldn’t let them down. I turned to the board. Game on. I threw my first darts. Estelle split the air, then Chanelle soared through the wind, and finally Belle gracefully landed in the board. “Seven” called the umpire. Damn it. It was the enemy’s go and he scored 100. It cut deep.

As the match wore on, my darts had improved. It was probably something to do with the fact that I was getting increasingly pissed. I always played better when I was drunk, it relaxed the arm. However, there was a fine line between in-the-zone drunk and on-the-floor drunk, and I usually accomplished the latter, therefore never reaching the final, even if I had wanted to.

After the hustle and tussle of dart-throwing, stare outs and beer drinking, we had come to the final game. Whoever won would go through to the next round, otherwise known as round two. I threw first, Estelle and Chanelle let me down with low scores, but my wondrous Belle saved me at the last dart. The enemy had his turn, it was level pegging. All I needed was a double 16 to take my winning streak of one game a step closer to the prize. I kissed my trusty Belle, my lucky dart of the night. I lined her up. I felt like I had the power, the power of He-Man. I was Mr Ali, I was Mr Bradman, I was Mr Laver. I was Mr Schwarzenegger. I held my breath and threw my dart. The crowd gulped. I had missed. I was Mr Bean. But alas, with two more darts in-hand, victory could be salvaged from the jaws of defeat. I went through the motions again. I kissed Estelle for luck, though it didn’t work as she flew wide...of the board. It was all down to Chanelle. I pressed my fingers against her tungsten shaft, before whispering a little prayer into her non-existent ear. I threw. I heard gasps and then cheers from the crowd as Chanelle pounded into the board. I had missed my target, I had lost. My enemy’s lover, who was also my mother, ran to him in cheery celebration as I looked down at my cider, my only friend. I bent down to take in my defeat and felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up. It was the fourth woman in my life - after my tungsten babes - my wife of seven years and involuntarily my biggest fan. I looked up at her kind, smiling face. I hoped she was going to say something profound, something to get me through yet another disastrous first-round defeat. Finally, among the cheers in the background, my wife stood there, with an empty glass, and whispered, "it’s your round, and don’t forget to get your dad one too."

#writing #prose #amwriting #shortstory #shortstorycompetition #writer #comedywriting

She always liked how I did her laundry. Truth be told, I liked doing her laundry, too. I would guess at what she was doing by her laundry. I would look at the grass stains, the caked-on mud, and the mysterious bodily fluids and fantasize scenarios about what she did to get such soiling. She was busy. Always creating dirty laundry.

I would always smell her laundry, as much a part of the process as detergent or setting the length of the spin cycle. Ah, the spin cycle.

Even the nefarious stains, each with their own tell-tale olfactory clues, could not mask away her own womanly scent. How would I describe it? Her scent is she. As real as the train approaching when you’ve been tied down to the tracks, yet as elusive as a unicorn. As much to do with the real world as a cloud, yet when I smell she, I smell life on Earth—evolution, foraging, mating, and natural selection. I smell the intangible of joy. Like the tesseract, it cannot be categorized within the limitations of mere human sensorium. It is victory, submission, defiance, conquest, and surrender all rolled into one.

It is she.

I lift one of her very personal items to my face and inhale deeply. I am with her when I do this. I am lifted; I leave, out-of-body, coasting on the pleasure of my forebrain. The second cranial nerve has allowed me to appreciate her beauty. The eighth cranial nerve has allowed me to harmonize to her song. But my first cranial nerve is a gift from God. Pheromones blow me into a singularity, all places and one simultaneously. I am drunk with her scent.

She. Just the word, with its digraphical phoneme…

Pheromones and phonemes. She. With its unvoiced fricative, my vocal chords don’t even vibrate until I get to the long ē. But it is worth the wait. It is when the angels join the chorus of my pleasure.

I sit atop the washer, sorting and smelling, separating and sniffing. When I think I have exhausted all of the odorifics contained thereon, I let it slip through the open door to join the others. The t-shirt with its musky tale of mammalian exertions. The scarf, sure to be ruined by the machine, with the alchemy of its man-made perfume concocting with the fragrance of she a bouquet of marriage between her and the rest of the world and all its wonders, not the least of which is the wonder of herself.

On second thought, I reach back in to retrieve the previous olfaction delight. I have not exhausted it, and I bask one more time in the fragrance of lovely, of feminine, and of implied symbiosis with me.

I appraise her other clothing, piece by piece. The bend of her knee here, the flex of her elbow there. Pivots that separate her sinews and pumping muscles. Rhythmic tightening and relaxations, glistening with the thinnest layer of moisture that sparkles magically on her faint hair. Bodily functions contained within a working model of woman, sculpted from fulfillment. I dream of these sinews and pumping muscles atop myself, and both of us atop this very washing machine. Machinations and machines come together today because it is wash day.

I reach for a towel. It is a heavy towel and it is not even dirty. It will conflict with the delicates; it will upset the balance of the rotation. It is on purpose: I want an uneven load. I place a detergent packet into the machine, to wipe the slate clean, to start over, to deliver to me the next generation of sensory enchantments. I push the right buttons.

I disrobe.

The machine is an old one. It is not level, again, on purpose. I can feel the warmth on my bare buttocks as it begins its cycle of operation. I become aroused. If she were to walk in now, she would see it plainly.

She knows the game. She enters and feigns surprise, then outrage. She approaches me tenuously, testing each step as she does. Her livid expression undergoes devolution into one of lust. The machine is rumbling in its excitement. My arousal becomes stronger, crying for help. She disrobes, letting her things drop methodically and silently to the floor, staring into my eyes the entire time. Sex isn’t with genitals, it is with the brain.

It is with the soul.

She wants to join me during the machine’s excitation phase. Nude, a word that only portrays beauty, is not correct; she is naked, the better word, because it is the name that promises action. She steps up on a footstool and then throws one leg over my lap. Next she is sitting on top of me, insertion completed in one fell swoop. Deftly. I am surprised at her moisture. Again, the wrong word. She is wet, the name for love.

In the next phase of the machine’s cycle, there is a plateau during which it maintains a continued churning agitation. My anticipation builds, as we await the next phase. The thin layer of moisture on each of us is now the only thing between us. Alternating movements and alternating current both conspire to initiate in each of us the next phase of the cycle. The machine pauses. It is a spinal pause in us, as well, like that one moment on the roller coaster where the chain that drags the cars up the first and highest hill disengages in preparation for the headlong rush into the lake of adrenaline below. Chink, chink, chink, chink…then… the moment for which I have waited.

The spin cycle.

My friend, the heavy towel, creates the uneven load. The bespoke footpads, upon which the machine sits unevenly, partner with the towel. If the water-filling of the machine was the excitement and the agitation the plateau, the spin cycle is our climax. Woman and man and machine are one, as centripetal battles centrifugal and undulation and reciprocal pumping become cohorts. And that smell, she, wafts up to engulf us. Not just she, however, but us.

The spin reaches its peak as do we, and once again I am submerged within muscles and sinews and soul.The machine is frantic, the woman is ravenous, and the man is desperate. The sum greater than the addition of the parts.

There is a physiological reckoning in us when the machine now experiences its final phase, its spin down. It is a resolution, as we collapse in our own spindown. When all of the torque is spent, so are we. All is quiet—woman and man and machine.

I look down to regard the clothing she had removed before. I look back up toward her and she smiles.

“Very dirty clothes,” I say to her. They promise another laundry day.

Good Morning, Prosers,

The way publishers find new authors might have just changed forever.

We are pleased to announce that we have joined forces with publishing giant Simon & Schuster, whose legacy includes Ernest Hemingway, Carrie Fisher, and Stephen King.

Simon & Schuster’s editing team hopes to discover the next generation of great authors by utilising our challenge feature and our social community, initially through a 500-2000 word writing challenge that ends June 1, prompting you to, “Write a story, chapter, or essay about whatever you like. The 50 best entries will be announced by Prose and read by Simon & Schuster’s editorial staff for consideration.”

This challenge stipulates a minimum of 500 entries and a maximum of 2,000.

We will announce the top-50 entries on June 21, 2017.

Here is the challenge URL: https://theprose.com/challenge/5367

We hope you are as excited about this as we are. If you know people who would like to get noticed by Simon & Schuster, spread the word(s).

Until next time, Prosers,

Prose.

Morning, Prosers,

We interrupt your usual Prosing schedule to bring you news of our latest feature update.

As of right now, we have implemented a feature in which ALL Prosers can earn coins.

All posts now have a new button. Juice. This Juice button allows fellow Prosers to tip your words. Have you ever read a piece and thought, “Damn, that’s good?” Well now, when you do, you can show your appreciation above and beyond a like or a comment, and send them some Juice.

Prosers can donate between 10 and 10,000 coins per post to the author. Authors receive 80% royalties which will be deposited straight into the wallet of said author.

Received donations can be viewed in the “Sales History” tab on the website.

This feature is currently only available on the website. However, we are working on bringing this to iOS as we speak. Remember, you can spend your coins on both platforms, but you can only buy coins on the web. 

Once we have updated the iOS version to reflect the Juice button, push notifications to alert you of kind donations will be active.

We will also be adding a Juice button to profiles in the not-so-distant future.

Not only this, but we have also banished a number of pesky bugs too. Be gone, and good riddance!

We are working on a number of new things to keep us busy, but as always, if something isn’t working how it should be or if you have any questions, get in touch with us. We are always happy to help!

Until next time, Prosers,

Get Juicing.

Prose. 

Words will never explain what it's like to watch your best friend die in your arms. You're doing everything in your power to stop him from bleeding out. Telling him that it's not that bad and he's going to be fine. The truth is, in the back of your mind you know he's dying and your trying to make his final moments on this wretched earth peaceful. Every single day that goes bye, I think of you. I think about all the good times that we've had together and the bad. I think about your wife and your beautiful baby girl. I think about how I wish it was me. I have nothing, you had everything. The anger, the sadness, they will never escape me. I wish I could have saved you from that Improvised explosive device, but I couldn't. The second you stepped on that pressure plate, it was over. Even though I was disorientated and there was blood poring from my ears and legs; my first instinct was to help you. I can't even put into words how I feel to this day. I see this every night while I try to sleep. I love you Taylor and I'm sorry that I couldn't save you.