Work Text:
"What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?”
The reply is automatic, spit out of the same mindset I’d programmed into myself.
“I’d move on,” an empty grin spreads across my face, “and probably forget about you.”
What else am I supposed to do, huh?
Just hand her my heart, just like that? Force open the dusty casket, unravel the suffocating wrappings over the flesh, let it breathe and throb and surge…
As if it was alive?
I cackle at the absurdity of such a thought. Even as I do so, the animated purple bunny body from which cartoonish laughter erupts affirms this amusement.
No one is alive here. We're in a [@#$!% ] game–a wacky world of lurid colours, digital animations and stereotypical characters. It’s all fake, all farce. My so-called ‘feelings’ were never real. What happened back then doesn't matter, because she wasn't real. I'm not real.
“Ribbit, please– if you can hear me in there–”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry–”
“--I should’ve been here–”
“--you were just getting so–”
“You’e not really gonna just–”
I don’t know how long I’d been staring at her door, at the red X scrawled over her face. That ridiculous, cartoon frog face with its exaggerated blush spots. And then reality hit me, like a casket lid slamming shut—I’m mourning a damn cartoon frog. Oh, and I thought Kaufmo was the only clown–!
“--you’ve changed, since she–”
“--why’re you–”
“--it is a big deal! We loved her–”
“--drop it, I know you still care–”
He was pretty good at the whole clown thing, I'll give him that.
Really though, what’s more ludicrous? The nature of this world itself, or attempting to take it seriously?
There’s no point in pretending the “people” around me are anything more than playthings. There’s no point in getting attached to objects with planned obsolescence. There’s no point in acting like we’re all just as real as we once were. Nothing is real here. Not the soft conversations once shared, not the light-hearted laughs that once escaped our lips, and absolutely not the glitch that makes their echoes still haunt my heart.
My heart. If I were to unlock its casket, what would I find? A pulse or a programme?
The answer should be obvious.