Dr. Hester looks as if he’s in awe. “It’s controlled chaos. Like the mind. I’ve seen what you speak of. I’ve seen it in the neurons firing, the electrical arc of thought. It moves with purpose.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slow. “Mr. Frazier. Are you there?”
“Send me home,” Mike moans. “I want to go home.”
“Mr. Frazier, I need you to listen to me. Even if we could send you back, even if we thought it was possible, it would mean Greg Hughes would disappear. You cannot exist at the same time for long without… consequences.”
“I don’t want to disappear,” Greg says. “You can’t make me disappear.”
“You aren’t even real,” Mike snaps. “None of this is real. Sean is real. Sean is my home. You’re all liars, all of you. None of this is—”
“Sean Mellgard no longer knows you exist,” Dr. Hester says, and the air is sucked from the room.
Dr. King closes her eyes.
Mike says, “No. No, that’s not true.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Dr. Hester says, voice low. “It’s a fail-safe in place in case one of the participants passes away. We added it to Project Amorea so that if one of you died, the others wouldn’t question where they went. The moment of their death, they just… disappear. A memory wipe is in place and it’s meant to keep Amorea in balance, though sometimes corners were cut. Do you remember a man named Oscar?”
Mike says, “Fo sho, he had a stacked honey named Nadine the African Queen,” though he doesn’t know what any of his words mean.
“Did he?” Dr. Hester says. “That would explain—no matter. He existed—they existed—until they didn’t. His passing was rather sudden, much like your waking was. As soon as he died here, everything about him in Amorea was erased or reconfigured. It was the same for you. We unplugged you from Amorea, because you were moving between the real world and the construct. It triggered the fail-safe. I’m sorry to say that the moment you left, every single person in Amorea had their memories wiped of you. Even Sean. It was the only way, Mr. Frazier, to ensure the survival of the project. But take heart, if it can provide you with any solace to know that soon, it won’t matter. Because the more Mr. Hughes remembers, the more you will fade, until soon, you’re nothing but a remnant of a long-ago dream.”
XXII
MIKE DOESN’T speak for a long time after that, though Greg can feel his overwhelming grief. It permeates through everything, with every shared heartbeat, with every shared breath. It’s a howling burning deep inside of him, down to his very core. He feels the loss almost as clearly as if he suffered it himself. But Greg never knew Sean and can only pick up bits and pieces, little fragments of memories that leak out of Mike. They say things like big guy and get ya a cup of joe? There’s a smile that feels like sunshine, and every time it feels like his skin is blistering from the inside out. He’s always considered himself bisexual, maybe leaning more toward women than men, but he can taste Sean’s skin on his tongue, can almost remember the weight of him as he bore down on Mike. These little flashes of sorrow, like half-burnt photos after a fire, are all Mike thinks about.
He doesn’t try for control over Greg after that.
Greg doesn’t know whether he’s relieved or not.
/>
Drs. King and Hester all but fled the room when Mike surged forward, teeth snapping, arms rising up as high as they ever have since they woke. Greg was of a mind to let him have at it, if he could. Their fingers were curled like claws, and he felt a hollow echo of Mike’s fury, and it mixed in with his own that something like this could happen. It was strange, after, to discover he wasn’t angry for himself.
He was angry for Mike. And all that he’d lost.
Even if he isn’t real.
I am too, Mike says, voice dull and flat. I’m real. Everything I am is real. Everything I’ve ever felt is real.
Greg wants to believe him. He does. But he doesn’t know how. He’s still not quite sure he’s grasped what’s actually happened here. The position that he’s in. He wonders if, since he’s awake, he’ll have to go back to jail. If he’ll ever be able to walk free. Or even walk at all. While Mike’s distracted—
I’m real Sean’s real all real everything everything this is a dream a dream a dream
—he’s looking down at his legs, and they look like bed knobs at the knees, and broomsticks for legs. It’s a disgusting sight. He’s always found pride in being large and thick and muscular, but now he’s this twisted version of himself.
Greg’s not surprised, either, by what Dr. Hester told him. About how he ended up here. Unlike Mike, he believes him. At least about Jenny. How she framed him. That video, whatever it said, was a show of theatrics, which means she planned everything. It was fucked up, the whole situation. He’s absurdly thankful that he can’t remember what happened at the moment. He’s got too much other shit to process. He doesn’t need his wife’s betrayal on top of everything else.
That, and it’s probably better not to remember getting your skull crushed in on the floor of a prison shower.
The nurse comes in while Mike is muttering in the background. She asks him how he is, and Greg laughs at her. “How do you think I am? Do you know what you people have done to me? What you’ve made me into?”
She doesn’t say much after that.
No one does, really.
HE SLEEPS as Greg and dreams as Mike.
He dreams of a beautiful boy.