Murmuration

Dr. Hester’s eyes slide toward unfocused and he slumps a little, staring off into nothing. Greg glances at Dr. King, but she shakes her head. “Give it a minute. This happens. Sometimes. If it goes on longer than a minute, the rest of this will have to wait until another time.”

“No,” Greg snaps. “I want answers.”

Mike says, “I want to go home, oh Jesus. Oh god. Please just let me—”

Dr. Hester coughs. He blinks once. Twice. And then, “Sorry about that. I got a little lost.” He looks around the room, nodding at Dr. King, then looking back at Greg and Mike. “I’m old. That’s not something even I can stop. It’s inevitable, you know. Where were we?”

“You picked me,” Greg said with a growl. “You took me from—”

Dr. Hester laughed weakly. “I took you from a hospital room where you’d been without a visitor in four months. I took you from a place where not a single person gave a damn whether you lived or not. Did you know that a reporter snuck past hospital security to take photographs of you? They splashed them across the tabloids, you swollen and broken, hooked up to more machines than the general population even knew existed. And how they loved it. They ate it up. They said it was what you deserved. That it was karma. Divine retribution. That your poor, poor wife deserved more than you ever gave her. That she lived in fear of you until one day you just snapped and killed her. That’s what I took you from, Mr. Hughes.”

“I didn’t….” But honestly, Greg doesn’t know what he did. He knows the anger that’s burning inside him, knows it’s a familiar thing, knows he grew up in a home where violence was a normal thing. For all he knows, maybe he did do it.

No, Mike thinks, though his voice is rather lifeless. There was a knife. You called it a Wüsthof Ikon Damascus. She came after you. She was angry. You didn’t—

“It doesn’t matter,” Dr. Hester says. “Not anymore. I saved you. From a life where you would have been nothing but a husk lying in a room where no one cared one iota about your well-being.”

“Like I am now?” Greg asks.

Dr. Hester doesn’t even flinch. “I know what it seems like now. I know what you’re thinking. But I cared enough to give you a second chance. To give you something more.”

“You did it for yourself.”

“All motives are selfish, Mr. Hughes. They always are. Yes, I did it for myself. But I also did it for those who would come after me. I did it in hopes of giving them a chance for something more, even if their minds begin to fracture.”

Mike thinks, What do you know about schizophrenia?

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Greg asks. “How do I know any of this is real?”

“He’s in there, isn’t he?” Dr. Hester asks, cocking his head. Even Dr. King begins to look on with far more interest. “In your head.”

Greg says nothing.

“Early on, we ran into some difficulties. We put the first few people into Amorea just as they were. We uploaded the consciousness without any significant alterations, aside from tamping down the more extreme emotions. It went well at first. Those six people went on as if they’d lived there their entire lives. But then they began to ask questions. Why am I here? Where did I come from? What is this place? Is this real?”

Mike thinks, Yes. That. All of that.

“Have you ever watched someone go insane, Mr. Hughes? It’s a terrible thing. We can’t see into Amorea, not clearly, not like you’re thinking. It’s not some Orwellian nightmare where we know your every single move. No. We get bits and pieces that have to be put together like the most complex three-dimensional puzzle. In studying the brain waves, it’s like seeing a picture that’s been filtered too many times. Like a dream that you can remember, but only just.” He chuckles. “It was more than I’d ever thought we’d get, honestly. But it didn’t last very long. Those six, they… it was terrible to watch.”

“Then why did you?” Mike asks, voice cold.

“Because in every experiment, there is going to be trial and error. It’s basic science. There are going to be failures. There are going to be times that you have to go back to the drawing board. And that’s what we did. After… well, after that failure, we started over. And it came to me then that if the people couldn’t be themselves, if they couldn’t be in Amorea and be as they’d been in life, couldn’t they be someone else? After all, Amorea was meant to be the best possible place it could be. Why couldn’t the same be said about the people?”

Mike thinks, I’m real. I’m real. I’m real.

“Mike Frazier is the better part of you,” Dr. Hester says, leaning forward. He’s doesn’t reach out for them, which is a good thing. They’re both wound too tightly. “We took away the anger. The rage. The sins of mankind, I suppose you could say. We gave you a different name, so that you couldn’t be triggered into believing you were Gregory Hughes. Mike Frazier is a mask. He’s a costume. Like a child playing dress-up. Mike Frazier is not real.”

Mike says, “I am real. I am real, you bastard. You asshole. I am real.”

“Perhaps we should—” Dr. King starts.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Dr. Hester says, eyes glinting. “A divide. In your head. You think you’re one person, but you also think you’re another. That will fade. In time. Mike Frazier will fade from you. He speaks for you, and you can hear him in your head, but soon, that will stop. Your memories might return. They might not. I don’t know.”

Greg thinks, Let me, Mike. Let me, let me do this.

Mike thinks, I’m real! I’m real! I’m real!

“Do you remember Amorea?” Dr. Hester asks.