House of Dead 

'It's been six months since I last saw you,' said my Mother. 'Is everything ok? How have you been?'

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. 'Has it really been that long?'

She nodded.

'I've been so busy,' I said, struggling to meet her fragile blue eyes. The room was coated in darkness and the hazy smell of dust drifted in the air. She re-adjusted her glasses and took a hard look at me.

'Are you sleeping well?' she asked. 'I hope you're not working too hard again.'

'We do have a lot of work to do,' I admitted.

There was a faint ticking in the background and I sunk a little deeper into the soft, green seat.

'You do look tired,' she said. 'You need to look after yourself.'

I rubbed my eyes and felt the pang of dust stick to my eyelids. I scratched harder and felt them burn, leaving a glimmered, bloodshot mess - glazing my vision of Mother with a stream of tears.

'We have a lot of updates to install, deadlines to meet, code to fix.' I explained.

I knew my explanation was in vain. Her wrinkled face squeezed tight and I saw her try to understand but her brows arched upwards and the dazed look of confusion cast itself upon her.

'We have been working very hard,' I said simply.

'You are always working too hard,' she said after some silence.

'And still we have so much work to do,' I muttered to myself, examining the neglected fluoral wallpaper.

She coughed with a hoarse splutter and then took a moment to catch her breath.

'You're always so hard to contact,' she complained. 'Whenever I try to call you your phone is out of service. Have you changed your number?'

'It's the same number,' I replied dryly.

'Then why can't I contact you?'

'It'd be too hard to explain,' I replied. 'Technology is to blame.'

Another blank silence fell upon us like a dead weight. I looked around nervously as she doused me in sweet smiles.

'Mother.. You may start to see me less and less,' I hesitated.

'Why?' she said with surprise.

'I'll still see you, but this..' I stopped. This would be too hard to explain. It was ridiculous that I had even thought of explaining it to her.

'It's nothing to worry about. Forget about it. I'll see you soon.'

'Ok,' she smiled. 'I will see you soon.'

A heavy sigh left my lungs.

'End simulation!' I barked.

The room plunged into darkness and I felt my body lift through the air. The cloud of dust disappeared but there were still tears down my red cheeks. My hands felt for the helmet around my head and then I lifted it off. I was back in my office; a cool, modern space with a desk covered in reports and sales charts. How long had I been out for? 4 hours. I took a sip of water from my desk but figured that didn't help with the ache in my heart. I reached for my drawer and swigged from a bottle of brandy I had stashed away. I started filling in some paperwork and then there was a knock at my door.

'Who is it?'

'Derren, boss.'

'Ok, Derren. Come in.'

A gangly man with a black ponytail walked in. He scratched at his stubble and cleared his throat.

'How are you, Derren?' I asked out of courtesy.

'I'm good, boss.' He approached me with some papers. 'I just need these to be signed.'

His eyes fell upon the half empty brandy and my weary eyes. 'How are you?'

I reached for the framed photo of my Mother propped on my desk and held it out to him.

'I've just been to see my Mother,' I smiled weakly.

His eyes looked at me up and down and he made a nervous chuckle.

'The simulation has helped a lot of people, boss.' He said. 'It helped me when my Father died.'

'You must think I'm crazy,' I laughed.

He was taken back by my drunken flash of doubt.

'After all,' I continued, 'I was the one who made this thing. And I was the one who advised you not to use it for dealing with grief or dead relatives. Look at me now.'

Derren forced a breathless laugh and bared a contorted grin at me. 'You just have to remember your own warnings,' he explained. 'They're not real. None of them are real. It's not real.'

I nodded and twisted my hand around the bottle's neck.

'It's just data.' I agreed sadly. 'Very good convincing data.'

'Data that makes you a lot of money,' he laughed.

I picked up a pen and started to scrawl my signature across the documents like a tiresome author at a book reading.

'Ok, Derren, that'll be all.' I sighed. 'Thank you.'

When he had left the room, I slid my papers to the side and propped the helmet back over my eyes.

'Activate simulation!'

The room fell apart and my Mother's dusty house sprung back to life. Her wrinkled face and eyes like warm jewels appeared before me.

-

My counsellor was a woman a few years my senior. She wore her brown hair in a bunch and always crossed her legs as she made notes on an A4 notepad. It didn't help that she looked like a younger version of my Mother.

'How many hours a week have you been using the simulation?' she asked.

'I've relapsed. I'm using it for more than 5 hours everyday,' I replied.

'And you know that's over the recommended allowance.' She looked up. 'An allowance that was originally set by you.'

'I feel like it's sucking me in. I've lost control of it.'

'Why do you think that is?'

'I miss the past,' I admitted. 'I don't always see my Mother. Sometimes I go for walks in parks that no longer exist, or I watch old TV shows that have been archived, or I see old friends before we grew apart.'

She jotted something down on paper and then looked up, waiting for me to continue.

'I invested so many years of my youth trying to become a success that I didn't get a chance to live my life. The simulation is a great way to experience the past.'

She nodded. 'But it's not real.'

'I know.'

'We get a lot of people coming in with the same problems. People who are addicted to the past - burying themselves in a lifetime of archived memories.'

'What do you tell them?'

'Two things. The first is that the past isn't real. It's just a subjective recreation of an event that has passed. We could both recreate an identical event but we'll portray it in different ways. We'll distort it with our own subjective lens. We need to focus on the present. It's a bit philosophical but it helps to think of it in that way.'

'What's the second thing?'

She looked at me coldly. 'And then I tell them to throw the machine away. Delete the data, get rid of it all.' There was a sudden spark of fear that lit up across her face, like a bright flash of lightening. 'No offense,' she added.

-

I strolled through my old house. My ex-wife was younger; her bright blonde hair hung loosely over her slender, tanned face.

'Good morning, darling.' She beamed.

I walked over to her and rested my lips on hers; I felt the sweet scent of daffodil perfume, her warm skin - this was all too real. I wasn't just using the simulation for dead relatives - I was using it for everything I had lost. Today was the day I would pine over my ex-wife, enjoying her company in the house we used to share.

'Did you know..' I started, pulling away from her. 'That in a few years you'll leave me?'

Her eyes widened and confusion etched itself across her face. 'What are you talking about?'

'You'll get tired of my obsessive desire to run a successful business. You'll grow weary of never seeing me.'

I looked at the wooden kitchen floor and then back up at her. 'And who could blame you?'

'Are you feeling ok?' she said.

There was no way she could understand, of course not. I stroked my fingers through her hair again.

'It's nothing to worry about,' I said reassuringly.

-

My desk was plagued with reports and articles about the damage of my simulation. There was the story of a man who had fallen in love with the machine so much that he had allowed it to swallow his life up. He had died using the machine because he could never leave the virtual worlds, and eventually he succumbed to starvation without even realising. He had been addicted. His story was stacked against statistics about how many people exceeded the warnings, of how long you should use the machine for. I sighed. What hope did the average customer have if I, the simulation creator, could not control my usage? Derren walked in as I was pouring myself a brandy.

'Derren,' I smiled. 'You're early. Please, sit down.'

I motioned the brandy to him.

'A drink?' I offered.

'No thank you, sir.' He smiled, gently waving both his hands under his chest. 'Drink disturbs my peaceful mind, especially at work.'

'On the contrary,' I laughed. 'It brightens mine.'

He looked at the scattered reports strewn across the surface like a field of autumn leaves.

'What were your findings?' I asked, sipping from the brandy.

Derren had arrived with a pile of his own papers and he placed them neatly amongst my own.

'It's hard to look at, sir,' he said nervously. 'However, our report shows that people who use the machine are not using it for the primary purpose: fun. No, they're using it for-'

'The past,' I interrupted. 'Of course. I know that. We all know that. What else?'

I leaned back on my chair and stared at the spotlight ceiling, glowing above us like artificial stars. I then gently closed my eyes. I heard Derren clear his throat and the fumble of his papers moving around: it sounded like the crackling of embers on a hot fireplace.

'People are not moving on,' he said blankly.

I opened my eyes and sat up straight again.

'People who use it become so obsessed with the past - or their own interpretation of it - that they stop living in the present.'

'Oh, I know,' I said sadly. I poured another drink.

'People who use it are 10x more likely to be suffering from depression, anxiety-'

'Right.' I said, cutting through him again. 'So, we are making people miserable, we're not letting people move on with their lives, that's what you're saying?'

He said nothing but looked uncomfortable.

'It's just what the reports show,' he clarified finally.

I picked up my helmet from under the desk and skimmed over the white, cold device. It weighed my hands down and glimmered under my office lights; resting on my palms like a huge bubble.

'What happens Derren, in your opinion, when we delete our accounts?'

'He looked at me with confusion and his bushy eyebrows creased into his eyes.

'This is not a trick question,' I said.

'If we delete our data, then it is gone?' he said slowly.

'And what happens to those that we keep on visiting? Our dead relatives and past lovers?'

'They disappear too, sir. Because they are not real.'

I stabbed my finger into the air.

'Derren, do you not see the tragedy in that? They don't know that they're not real. That one day we will erase them. Can you look into the eyes of your simulated data and delete it?'

I paused for effect.

'Can you lose your loved ones again?' I asked seriously.

The silence lasted a while until he said, 'Maybe I will have that drink.'

-

I was walking through a park with my Mother. The warm rays bathed down on us and a thin breeze rustled through the trees. The sky was a gentle blue - our stony path cut through a blanket of green grass.

'It's a lovely day,' she croaked.

There was nobody around for miles. The distant sound of birds singing floated through the air.'

'Do you remember where we are?' I asked, holding her bony hand. The skin was blotched with the colour of large veins sprawled across her joints. She pointed to a distant tree with her other hand.

'I used to take you for picnics as a child. Over there - by that tree,' she smiled.

I felt my eyes swell up with tears and my throat tighten as if a large marble was stuck inside it.

'How do you know that?' I said looking at her. 'I didn't programme that into you.'

She squinted into the distance and the lines on her face tensed; strained by the confusion flaring in her eyes.

'What do you mean?'

'Mother,' I stopped and pulled my hand from her fingers. 'This is not real.'

I gestured to the open space around us. 'None of this is real. Not even you.'

'Are you sure you're ok?'

I wrapped my arms around her and her frail, skeletal frame fell into my chest. I felt her shoulder blades jutting out from her back.

'I'm not coming back,' I announced. 'I need to leave you in peace.'

I let her go and saw that her eyes had filled with tears.

'What are you talking about?'

'You won't have to live like this anymore. Seeing me at random intervals and then having no contact with me when I disappear. All of this will be over soon.'

'What will happen to me?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I simply don't know.'

-

It had been six months since I had last used the machine. I was sat at my final counselling session. My counsellor had grown her hair down to her shoulders and she had stopped using her notepad. She looked relaxed and an easy smile rested on her face.

'And how do you feel?' she enquired.

'I feel like I'm really starting to move on. I visit her grave and I put flowers by it - the whole thing feels a lot more normal.'

I stopped and stroked my chin.

'We've lost a lot of money,' I continued. 'The decision to stop distributing the machines to the public was hard. But not as hard as leaving my virtual worlds. I realised that a lot of people were suffering. I had to help them where I could.'

She nodded. 'And your ex-wife?'

A thin smile drew itself out.

'I'm meeting her tonight.'

She raised her eyebrows.

'In real life,' I laughed. 'She contacted me when she saw that my company had dissolved. She heard about it on the news. I think she wants to see how I am.'

'Do you expect anything to happen after you see her? Are you hoping for something?'

I shook my head and waved my hand dismissively. 'I will talk to her, see how she is. It'll be good to catch up. I'm expecting nothing.'

-

I met my ex-wife in a sunny bar - up on the roof terrace later that day. The summer sky was still smiling as the late evening hours drew upon us. She was sitting opposite me in a colourful flowery dress. Her face looked older than I had remembered. Her eyes were harder.

'What do you do now?' she asked curiously, twisting her glass of white wine around on the same spot.

'I've started up a non-profit organisation that helps people to deal with virtual reality withdrawal. My machines caused a lot of damage and ruined a lot of lives.'

She leant over the table and stroked the side of my cheek.

'I'm so proud of you,' she said.

I took her palm in my hand and then held it with both. The softness of her skin, the tenderness of her limp hand; the rising heat which bathed my arms. This was better than the machine. I was too busy admiring her hand that I had not spotted the tears rushing down her face until she pulled away.

'What's wrong?'

She sniffed and brushed her tears away - only for more to fall.

'I've missed you so much,' she whimpered.

'I've missed you too,' I said leaning over to her.

She pushed her chair back and a distance tore itself between us again.

'I can't,' she announced.

I looked at her and lowered my arms. She reached for the wine and tipped it down her throat.

'It was never as good as the real thing..' she muttered to herself.

'What?'

She looked up from the glass of wine. 'I wasn't talking about you.'

I tried but failed to understand.

'I can't keep visiting you,' she announced. Her words were like a ghostly echo of declarations I had made to my Mother.

'What are you talking about? We haven't seen each other in years.'

My stomach lurched. Surely this was not what I thought it was.

'I need to let you go. I'm not helping myself. Maybe in the real world you really will stop distributing these machines.'

'Stop it.' I barked. 'You're not making any sense.'

A dark wave of horror had cast itself upon me.

'They don't know that they're not real,' I recalled to myself.

The hairs on my arm prickled up and I grabbed her arms.

'Darling, you're not real.' she said. 

'Of course I am real,' I said frantically. 'Feel me, I am real.'

Her face was burning a shade of bright red; the tears glistened down her cheeks.

'Don't you worry. You won't have to suffer like this anymore,' she reassured. 'I'm deleting my account. You won't have to endure any of this.'

The angst was an electrifying current. How could all of this not be real? How could I not be real? After a few moments - another prospect loomed over me.

'If you are right, what would happen to me if you deleted your data?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'I simply don't know.'

There was a moment of cold silence; she looked at me and took a deep breath.

'End simulation.' she uttered.

She disappeared in front of me and then I was alone.