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‘None of this is real, Katya,’ Skip said softly. Her luminous, almost pale green skin seemed to shimmer under the moonlight of the fake Naples, the fronds behind her neck swaying in the gentle breeze.
‘All of this - it’s just a simulation. I know that must be hard for you to understand. You’re from so long ago.”
Katya nodded, breathing in deeply. She leant against the balcony railing and gazed out at the city. She had known something was wrong - this city she’d spent so much time in, loved and lost in - all the details were wrong, fuzzy, out of focus, a picture taken from very far away.
‘Where are you, again?’ she asked. ‘What… planet?’
‘It’s called Lexertel. It’s in the Andromeda galaxy. About two and a half million light years away and twenty centuries in the future.’
Skip’s eyes didn’t leave Katya’s face. Katya closed her eyes.
‘Why then?’ she asked. ‘Why would anyone bother…. dreaming us both in a box. What’s the point of introducing us, if we’re not even actually here?’
Skip’s fronds flashed behind her suddenly.
‘We are here,’ she said quickly. ‘This is a strong simulation. Far beyond the technology of your time, but for all intents and purposes we are here. Until we wake up.’
Katya was still gazing out over the holographic city.
‘By tomorrow…….. by tomorrow my husband may be dead. Such dangerous business. He never knew anything else, he’s been with the mafia since he was so young. Men with their guns, and their brute force and all I am expected to do is stand here in a silk dress and wipe away the blood.’
She turned towards Skip, the smallest glint of a tear in her eye.
‘On…. Lexertel. Do you have someone?’
Skip was almost taken aback by the question.
‘No,’ she said, in that singularly unplacable accent of hers. ‘No, I…. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling recently.’
Well. That was one way of putting it. A long string of bizarre events that landed her in a simulation with the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen and zero chance of knowing…. well, anything. A third of her planet had been cyber converted and she had taken any chance she could get to leave it. And Katya…… Katya knew this city they were supposedly in, had spent years here with her husband and his mafia, hiding out in rich hotels and entertaining for some of this planet’s most dangerous criminals.
She turned her head to watch the first rays of sun start to pick themselves out over the grainy rooftops.
‘Almost morning,’ said Katya, and Skip thought in that moment that she sounded more sad & weary than afraid.
Skip took a step closer.
‘I can find you, Katya. I have a friend, with a time machine, I know it sounds silly but I can come back and see you. Naples 1973. I’ll remember.’
Katya smiled and turned towards her, placing one manicured hand with her long, deep red fingernails against Skip’s face, moving her thumb just once under her green eye. The balcony started to get lighter, the colours getting paler, desaturation, the hologram getting brighter & grainier.
Katya leaned in and kissed Skip very gently on the forehead.
‘Goodbye, Skip. I’ll see you soon.’