Mia saw him across the bar. He had a goofy face, but their interests aligned—”Not-too-classical classical music,” dogs and not cats, and African wine. Mia looked at him again, sitting on a bar stool ordering a drink, but then he turned toward her with that weird smile.
She clicked her tongue and he vanished, Ion quickly replacing him with another man, nicely dressed and sharing no traits with Mia. She made a kissy sound and the system registered her interest. The new man, Axel, made the sound back to her and Ion matched the two in the system. The system chimed, signaling a message to Mia in the real world.
Mia took off her VR headset and looked around the room. The sun was setting, and everything was just as empty as it had been before. On her phone popped up Axel’s address, the location he’d selected for their date.
She freshened up and ate a few crackers before heading over.
#
Tali found a seat on the bus and placed her bag between her legs. She heard a couple talking behind her.
“That Ion stuff is fucked up.”
“I hear they just use it for sex.”
“Why don’t they just meet on an app like we did?”
Tali looked down at the bag between her feet and the Ion box inside. She felt her temperature rising but calmed herself. They just didn’t understand. And she was so lonely. She didn’t even remember when she’d become lonely, but one day when she woke up, the word was looming over her, and she’d lived with it, accepting it, feeding it ever since.
#
Across the bar, Timothy locked eyes with a perfect woman. Even their traits matched. He pursed his lips, but then he watched her click her tongue. She vanished and Timothy sighed. She was probably a tech-savvy hooker looking for business. Ion was pretty good at screening, but some of them got through.
They’d matched almost too perfectly.
In her place, an older woman had appeared, probably mid-fifties with an empty biography. She sat down beside Tim, and he could suddenly see the wrinkles in her hands.
“I’m just here to drink,” she said to no one in particular. “I like to watch it happen.”
Timothy was silent, unsure if she was speaking to him. He turned around on the chair and browsed the available women. Doctors, artists, travelers, and what was he? A Buddhist life coach. Not exactly the sexiest job.
“I read your stats,” the woman said. “Good luck.”
Timothy turned around and ordered a drink. It wouldn’t get him drunk, but the latest patch had almost nailed the flavor of Howling Donkey’s Donkey Kick IPA.
#
Old Herb told his wife he was going to the other world, so he laid down and strapped on the Ion headset. He selected the Infinity Bar and could smell the familiar wood inside as the world loaded.
He started on a bar stool, grabbed a gin, and stood up. People looked at him, too, reading his interests and desires, and he did the same until he noticed a new girl, young, interested in not being lonely anymore.
Herb smiled and approached the girl.
“Why are you lonely?”
“I don’t know.”
#
Mia sat there, feeling the car humming around her. She shut it off and the lights held for a moment before dying, plunging her into darkness as her eyes adjusted. A row of identical homes lined the road, occasionally punctuated by a porch light or the orange streetlights.
She’d never gone in before. Not to his place, not to anyone’s place.
Mia touched her temples, imagined putting on the headset, and closed her eyes. She could see the bar or the classroom or the church. She could see everything but herself.
There were no mirrors in the other world. Dissonance, they’d said. Human brains just couldn’t handle the missing details.
Mia twisted the rear-view mirror toward her. Two eyes looked back at her, a silhouette that could’ve been the other girl in the other world, the girl who’d get out of the car.
#
Herb’s shoulder popped when he took off the headset. He had to piss, so he pushed himself off the bed, hobbled for a second, and regained his balance. His wife lay beside him in bed, apparently having entered the other world sometime after him.
He left the bathroom door cracked open, light spilling into the attached bedroom. After washing his hands, he changed into his pajamas and crawled into bed beside his wife. Her hands rested on her stomach. She was wearing lingerie.
Herb pulled the covers up and rolled onto his side, his joints creaking. He stared at the subtle blue light emitted by his wife’s headset and imagined her at the bar, martini in hand. She looked so happy.
Why are you lonely?
I don’t know.
#
“Did you know,” the woman started, reaching over and flicking the rim of Timothy’s glass, “That there’s a place called ‘the Edge of the Universe?”
“Cool,” Timothy said, glancing back over the men and women in the bar. When the woman didn’t respond, he turned back and found her watching him. “Sorry, I’m just—”
“Don’t apologize so much.”
“Sorry.”
He stared down at his glass and the fingers that wrapped around it. Each digit looked just like his. They operated just like his. They felt just like his.
“Is it a mod?” he asked, and the woman’s eyes softened. She nodded.
“Probably. It’s free.” She took a drink. “Here…”
She grabbed a cocktail napkin and jotted out the address of the server. She slid it over to Timothy, but he left it where it laid. He smiled and thanked her, and was busily scanning the crowd when the woman got bored and walked away.
And then she was back, not the old woman, but the perfect match. She smiled at him and he pursed his lips to her. She shook her head.
“First, let’s talk.”
#
Tali looked at the note left on the bar, an address for a server. She looked around at the smiling, the dancing, the singing. She heard the sound of kissing approvals and watched couples disappearing into the real world.
She felt sick. She turned and punched in the address, and the world went black. She stood on something soft, grass, verdant and tall enough to tangle around her flats. She jumped back, heart pounding. She had been standing on the edge of a cliff, and beyond it, nothing.
She stepped back again and bumped into something, a bench, which she cautiously lowered herself onto.
Ahead of her was a blackness so pure she felt herself being drawn into it, a space so vacuous that she desired to become it. She stared into the abyss and began humming a song that had manifested from the ether. She smiled.
She was alone at the edge of the universe, but she wasn’t lonely. In pure solitude, pure silence, she’d found an answer for the old man.
Why are you lonely?
Because all these people are here.
—
Ian Sims is a writer from the Great Lakes region. He currently works in the Chicago tech sector, and in his off-time you can find him funding the Windy City’s used bookstores and ramen shops.
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Very melancholy and effective. The loneliness of the characters comes through. You get the feeling that the people aren’t going to find much happiness in the “shallow ponds.”