DISCOVER

The path passed many vendor streets, where people selling their items would line the street. He usually never paid them any attention, but today was different. Today was better. Today was the light at the end of a dark tunnel.

He turned and walked down the street. He only had a few gold coins with him, so he made a wise decision before he paid them. He bought a pair of shoes for his youngest. They weren’t the best, but they were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

He resumed his way back home, and his mind starts to wander over to the war. But he stops himself. They pronounced a cease-fire. There would be no more killing of innocent citizens. The situation was going to be fixed through diplomatic reasons. Through talking, like it should have been done before.

But then again, those were just rumours.

He banished those thoughts out of his mind. Today was different.

For the rest of the walk, he only thought of how his baby would be happy for the new pair of shoes. He fantasized about the future, saving enough money to leave this war-torn country, the kids getting the best education, living in a beautiful house, driving an expensive car, thousands of pastries waiting to be devoured by them. Never having to worry about another war.

He reached his town’s outskirts, and his pace quickened, his excitement to see his children growing so much that he couldn’t control. He was like a little kid.

He reached the town’s heart, and he was only a few streets away when he started to smell smoke. Maybe someone was frying something. Who wouldn’t with such happy news.

But as he started to get closer and closer, he realized he saw no one else in the square, and that there were gigantic plumes of smoke appearing out of buildings. And the smoke didn’t smell like chicken frying.

Maybe there was a fire.

He practically runs now. The smile on his face is gone. Hundreds of different situations run through his mind that all end with all of them laughing about how he thought something bad happened.

He sprints to his street and sees that all of it is gone. The entire street has disappeared. There is only smoke. He covers his mouth, and enters the street, not believing anything, but he knows, he knows, deep down, the truth.

There is no cease-fire.

He reaches his home, which is no more. There is only crumpled concrete.

And beneath it, the bodies of his family.

His children.

His babies.

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” -E.H.

As she swivels her cart around to bring the towels to the bathroom, I catch a glimpse of a yellow can of Lysol among the supplies on the bottom level of the cart. It’s ordinary enough, but I’m feeling wistful today, and the sight of it brings me back to a memory.

Years ago - gosh, it feels so long now - when I was fourteen and a wholly different young man than I am now, a new VR video game was released, called Reverie. Branded as “the game of the future”, Reverie was an experimental, fully-immersive VR simulation more lifelike than any before it, that gave players a world in which they were free to do absolutely anything - where the only limit was the player’s imagination. It was an instant success, and stores across the globe sold out within days. Luckily, one of my friends managed to get a copy, so together we got to experience it as it reached the peak of its hype.

Thousands of videos flooded YouTube as gaming channels vied to be the first to discover every Easter egg, pose every theory about the secretive creator, and explore every hidden corner and pathway. Until, that is, a glitch was uncovered. It happened during MasimPark’s livestream one day: the popular YouTube gamer was attempting to destroy as much of the simulation as possible by burning down every town he came across, in a sadistic experiment in seeing how far a player can push the boundaries of the world. When he came upon his third town, just as he was about to set a torch to the library, the livestream screen went black. His muffled voice could be heard through static, saying “Wait-- it’s glitching--” before it cut out entirely. MasimPark’s few thousand viewers laughed it off as poor connection or just him trying to get a rise out of the audience, but they didn’t know at the time that that would be the last anyone ever heard from him.

Of course, being the dumb kids we were, my friends and I tried to replicate the glitch. I lost a bet, and was the one elected to try it. When I entered Reverie, I stole a can of Lysol and sprayed it until the air was thick with a fake lemon stench. Then, I lit a match, and the whole place went up in flames. But after I did it, I got this really nervous, sick feeling about what I’d just done, even if the only people hurt were computer programs. I went to take off my headset, and my blood went cold as I realized there wasn’t one anymore. I was trapped, headset-less, and holding an empty yellow can.

But today, that same can sits on Mariana’s cart as she enters another room. It’s the same exact one I saw yesterday, and the same exact one that I set the yacht alight with at the ripe young age of fourteen. She always was my favorite NPC.

See, the thing people didn’t realize at the time was that it was never a glitch. In fact, Reverie was never really a game. It was a test of ethics, and if you failed, the simulation would take you as one of its own, living through it indefinitely.

I was mad about it once, but I’ve since come to terms with it. Trust me, it’s been at least eighty years here; I’ve tried everything. Any dream of escape was dashed long ago. But, in all honesty, it’s not that bad. With a snap of my fingers, I can go anywhere or do anything within the realm of the simulation at will. After all, in Reverie, you can do anything you choose. So, I chose to forget.