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Up. Down. The apple is bright red against the pitch-black star-speckled blanket of space beyond the reinforced glass, and Ren follows it with his eyes as it floats gently up, hits its zenith, falls back down to his hand just slightly slower than it should.
The ship’s gravity must be a little less than what it is on the average world, which makes sense, given it must be generated artificially somehow. The apple goes up, hangs suspended for a fraction of a second, floats back down.
Or maybe this, what’s acting on the apple now, is just regular planetary gravity, and what he’d gotten used to on Hermitcraft was what had been abnormal. Or maybe he’s misremembering it entirely, given how loose and floaty everything had gotten in the last days of the world. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to compare the sensations and rules of a fake world to a real one anyways. It could be all in his head.
He should probably just eat the damn apple and stop thinking about this. Stop chasing his own tail. It’s just an apple.
He catches it one-handed, studies it for a moment, still. He still can’t tell if it’s heavier or lighter than his brain expects it to be. It’s a nice-looking apple. Red, shiny, unmarked by bruises, just a touch of green around the stem.
He doesn’t want to eat it.
The problem isn’t with the apple itself, he thinks. The apple’s weight in his hand is reassuring. The problem is he’s not sure he remembers how he’s supposed to eat it.
In theory, he knows. It shouldn’t be such a problem. But he’s pretty sure everything was just… cleaner, inside the simulation. Less steps, less mess. When he wanted to eat, he just ate. One step, no hassle. He’s pretty sure that to eat this apple he should bite around the sides until it’s just a core, and then throw the core away. But it’s going to be inconvenient, and there’s going to be juice, and it’ll make his hands sticky, and he just… doesn’t want to.
If he were still in the simulation, it would be easy; he’d have the apple in his hand, he’d want to eat it, and then it would be eaten and his stomach would be full and there would be a pleasant sweet-fruity taste still lingering in his mouth.
He’s been having trouble sleeping recently, in the week or so since he and Doc woke up. It’s not a problem of comfort, just like how the problem with the apple is actually nothing to do with the apple and everything to do with his standards for the experience of eating having been completely upended. The beds on the ship are nice, sheets soft, and knowing Doc the mattresses are probably optimized for spinal support as well, or something like that.
He’s pretty sure he never had trouble sleeping in the simulation. He’d lay down, close his eyes, and then open them again to the rising sun. Or he wouldn’t bother to sleep at all, because he wouldn’t feel tired. It had just… been nice, to have the sharp edges and the realness of everything pared away down to something agreeable and soft and easy, just a few degrees better than reality.
He’s a little scared he might have ruined the real world for himself. He’s scared of how excited he is to get to the next season, to sink back into the pleasant and colorful and soft and hyperreal. And at the same time, he thinks, he’s a little terrified, because what if it won’t be like that at all?
What if it’s just more of this?
The apple goes up. Hangs. Falls back down. Ren is frowning.
The idea, the one that hangs in the back of his head and keeps him up at night in his perfectly comfortable bed, is creeping in again. Probably bad, to let that happen. He hasn’t really seen Doc yet today. He should probably go find him, talk to him, chase back the heavy curtains of darkness outside the windows with a good friend’s conversation even if they don’t talk about anything important at all.
That… would take effort, though, and he doesn’t want to do anything, least of all put all his issues on Doc, who’s almost certainly busy anyways. Everything feels heavy and complicated, and he mostly wants to keep sitting here and thinking himself in circles, because at least it’s easy.
The idea, the one that keeps worrying at the back of his mind like it’s got teeth, is that maybe this isn’t real at all. Maybe this wasn’t an escape at all- maybe they didn’t leave the simulation, but entered it instead- maybe that’s why everything here feels just a little wrong, off, too rough on his skin.
Maybe getting to the next season, and sinking back into the real reality, the one that’s better, will be like sinking back into a warm bath. Like going home.
At least, and he’s self-aware enough to admit it to himself, he wants that to be true.
Up, down. He should probably eat.
When did he last eat?
He can’t remember, which is alarming in its own way. Doc had been- had been very clear when they last talked about it (because he’d found Ren had passed out in a corridor, whoops). No respawn, in this world outside the world. If he doesn’t eat, he might just die, and not come back.
He catches the apple and takes a bite. Tries not to wince at the juice on his fingers. It tastes good, like he knew it would. A little gritty in his teeth.
He makes himself eat the whole thing, even though it feels like it takes forever and even though he knows he’s just going to be hungry again later, because Doc is going to be so incredibly upset with him if he dies of not feeding himself after they went through all that effort to get out from under the falling moon.
And now he has to figure out what to do with the core. Awesome. He doesn’t think there’s a trash can around here anywhere- of course there’s not, it’s a spaceship-
Where did the core go?
Ren blinks, ears flicking back, and stares at the arm of the chair like the core will suddenly reappear where he set it down and where it now no longer is. Not only is it not there, but there’s no sign that it ever was there, no faint stain of residue left in its shadow. He can still taste it in his mouth.
…Where had they been getting apples from in the middle of space? Fresh, perfectly ripe, perfectly sweet apples?
Outside the window, the stars are spinning. The gravity is all wrong.
He wishes he had the apple back in his hands again. He wants to twist it apart, inspect its insides, see if it really holds up under direct scrutiny. Maybe that’s why it vanished. Maybe it wasn’t food at all.
He feels, abruptly, a little sick, a little like he wants to throw up. He doesn’t want to, actually, because if he throws up he’ll just have to eat something again, but he doesn’t know if what he’s just eaten was actually food or a lie, and the more he thinks about it the more nauseous he feels.
This isn’t real. He feels, suddenly, sure of it. Where did the apple come from? It wasn’t as though they had an orchard on board the ship. This isn’t any more real than the simulation had been; it’s just more convincing, with juice that runs down your fingers and sleep that doesn’t come automatically.
The conclusion doesn’t bring any relief. It feels, if anything, anticlimactic.
If this isn’t real, he wonders if it’s true that there’s no respawn here. Maybe Doc’s wrong after all. Not that he’s planning on testing it, but- he still feels nauseous, horribly so, and something in him wants ot pull his own guts apart to examine the contents of his stomach.
He stands up, all at once, and the lightness of the gravity catches him off balance and he has to catch himself on the arm of his chair. He wants to have something solid under his feet, and the sun on his back. Everything feels wrong, dizzyingly disorienting, and he needs to go find Doc.
He needs to go find Doc. He grabs that thought, holds it in his head like an amulet, and finds his footing. He needs to go find Doc, and tell him about the apple.
On the second step, something crunches under his foot, and he looks down.
The apple core, beneath his shoe, crushed and oozing juice. He stares, and tries to determine if it’s real or not, tries to determine if it was always there or not, if it really did fall off the arm of the chair and he just didn’t notice or if this is a mistake being hastily corrected, the fix not quite fast enough to keep him from spotting the thread.
For a moment longer, he considers still going to find Doc and asking him where they were getting the apples from, and considers clawing his own insides out, and considers-
Then he sighs, reaches down, picks the core up, and goes to find a trash can.