Simulations

Masha Kisel

Summer 2040: Three Days After Upload

T he plastic monitor flashing a tiny blue light repulses me as if it were a severed torso or an amputated foot. Shame on me. What if Jonathan had been in a car accident and he was just a head and torso kept alive by monitors and wires? But this wasn’t an accident. It was intentional. Elective. Three days ago, my husband chose to freeze himself and upload all 86 billion of his copied neurons onto Soulscape’s computational system.

“This is Jonathan’s container,” the technician casually announced and handed me a dome-shaped device, as if disembodied husbands in containers were the new normal. “He will communicate with you through this. Don’t leave him alone for too long for the first few weeks after the initial upload. If you let him fragment, it’ll be like putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again.” He laughed so hard at his own joke he had to turn up his O2 to stop coughing. “But seriously, ma’am. It’s crucial that you interact regularly until he integrates into his new reality.”

Despite Soulscape’s guarantees and promises, the simulated world to which Jonathan has been uploaded isn’t finished. For now, he exists in darkness. When the crackling of the static begins I close my eyes because I can’t look at that plastic little prison while he’s cursing, pleading to be let out.

When Charlie was born, Jonathan and I agreed not to keep pets. It would be too much work, we said. Now Jonathan’s monitor in the corner of my room is the pet I didn’t want – whimpering for attention, interrupting my sleep.

I can’t tell Charlie. Not yet. He’s only eight. A sensitive boy. Jonathan’s absence is easy enough to cover up for now. He’s used to his father leaving for weeklong Evolving Beings retreats and solitary vacations to “get back to himself.”

It was often a relief not to have Jonathan in the house. His casual slights, masked as playfulness, made for an inhospitable environment for easily wounded creatures like Charlie and me. When Charlie tried playing the ukulele I got him for Christmas, Jonathan laughed and tousled his hair: “Wow, buddy, you really don’t have a musical bone in you, do ya?” Charlie hid the ukulele in the farthest corner of his closet, draping an old sweatshirt over it, as if the thing was cursed and he didn’t want it looking at him.

Winter 2025: Fifteen Years Before Upload

J onathan was my boss at SunFlour – Chicago’s oldest vegan bakery. For the first three months of our forbidden flirtation I lived from one euphoric encounter to the next: the accidental bump of shoulders in the walk-in freezer; cigarette breaks in the back alley; sharing leftover scones at the end of our shift. I even tasted soy buttercream off his fingertips once. After sleepwalking through four years as an accounting major at the local community college, I finally found what I loved. My days began at 5am, but I rushed into SunFlour eager to complete my list of baking projects. Of course I was also running to see Jonathan. In our shared daily routine, punctuated by stolen affection, I thought of us as a couple even before the two bottles of red wine at the holiday party made it official.

Waking up at his apartment after our first night together, I wandered around barefoot while he was still asleep, trying to glimpse something beyond what he revealed at work. His matching beige couch and chairs were spotless, made even cleaner by the morning sunlight streaming through the bay windows. There wasn’t a single bruise on the fruit in the blue and white porcelain bowl on the oak dining table. The black slate bathroom floor tiles heated up when you stepped on them.

As a kid I often came home to an empty house and foraged in the cabinets for crackers. My dad was a traveling sales rep for a medical supply company, and my mom worked as a cashier at two different department stores. I gravitated toward warm places and people. Standing in Jonathan’s apartment, I felt taken care of even as he remained in the other room.

I had no idea about his enormous family wealth. I didn’t know that he was also part-owner of SunFlour, a vanity project of his hippy uncle. I didn’t know that the spotless comfort of the apartment was the work of a weekly cleaning crew. He was a few years older than me and I saw his tidy home as proof of his emotional maturity, a slice of grownup home-lovingness I desperately craved.

That damned fruit bowl, with its perfect Anjou pears, earned my trust.

Summer 2040: One Week After Upload

“R ose! Rose!” Jonathan calls out to me, the blue light flashes again and again in the corner of our room.

There was once a time when I was so in love with him that nothing about his body could disgust me. I cleaned the stains he left on the carpet during his ayahuasca trip. We were never sure what he took because he got the brew from a woman he had met at one of his Evolving Beings retreats. Instead of receiving visions, he fell into a snoring sleep and lost control of his bowels on our living room floor.

“Thank God you’re okay! You scared me.” I fussed over him, brushing sweaty curls from his forehead and holding a glass of water to his lips when he woke up. I wiped up after him without a word of scorn.

Now I can’t stand the sound of his voice.

“Rose, it’s empty here. Tell them to fix this or bring me back.” His fear is contagious. For a moment our bedroom is a simulation too. The skylights hang permanent clouds overhead. I feel equally trapped.

“I talked to the technician,” I say, trying to keep panic from creeping into my voice. “They’re working on it as fast as they can. Isn’t anyone else with you?”

“No one’s here. I’m alone!” he sobs. “She didn’t go through with it.”

“Who didn’t go through with it?” I ask, too exhausted to care about the answer.

He remains silent.

I summon all the psychological tools I used for my fear of flying, years ago, when travel was still possible. On the plane, I’d repeat self-hypnosis mantras to transport myself out of the metal box six miles above ground. “We’re not that high up. This is just like riding on a train.” And if that didn’t work I told myself that I was the plane and the sky and the ground below, that I was the world’s soul, softly treading to my destination on six-mile legs made of air currents.

“I love you babe, but you’re so neurotic,” Jonathan would say, sprawled out in his first class window seat next to me, vodka tonic in hand. “Just enjoy the ride.” I wanted to believe that this was just his way of helping, but he punctured my fragile membrane of serenity. From the corner of my eye I tried not to see the sky’s terrifying vastness framing Jonathan’s profile. I thought I spied a crocodile’s smile.

Now, I try to convince myself that Jonathan and I are just talking on the phone; that he’s in another city; that he’s still in his body. But it doesn’t work, because this isn’t just about changing my own perceptions. I can only glimpse the periphery of his new experience, but it’s enough to make me feel like I’m falling too, to make the pattern on the hardwood floors squirm like it’s made of worms.

I reassure him that in the past week Soulscape has made progress on the simulated construction. Jonathan will soon have a new home. “This is just temporary. They’re building gardens, mountains, oceans, beaches. It will be so beautiful, I promise.” I need to believe this too. “You should at least be able to see the stone brick wall to the rose garden. Do you see the bricks and the climbing vines?”

“Yes,” he crackles miserably, “I’ve been staring at the wall. That’s all I’ve been doing for days. I can’t even sleep, Rose!”

“Okay, try touching it. Does it have texture?”

“I can’t fucking see my hands… but okay. Yes, it’s rough. Not quite like real brick, but grainy, yes.” His voice is shaking, but maybe it’s just the connection.

“Okay, now the vine. Are there any leaves you can touch?”

“They don’t have texture yet. It’s just color.”

“Focus on the green, honey. Describe the shade of green to me.”

Instead I end up talking to him of the rainforest we hiked on our honeymoon in Costa Rica, the sounds of unseen howler monkeys in the canopy and the blur of yellow and red feathers when we looked up.

Today the sight of thick foliage is rare. Here in Chicago, you have to buy tickets to visit greenhouses, indoor gardens, glass-domed forest play areas for kids. They sell out so fast we only go a few times a year.

It’s 7am and Charlie will wake up soon. He has his first playdate in months. The pollution levels are lower early in the morning so we’ll have to hurry through our breakfast.

“I’ll be back in two hours, Jonathan.” I say, and quickly disconnect before he has a chance to beg me not to go.

I can’t get used to the overcast grayness that flattens the world into two dimensions even in the summer. I check the Suntracker website: it has been fifty days since the last glimpse of blue sky, and it will be at least twenty more.

Lindsay is already there with her son Caleb when I drive up and park in our reserved spot. It’s hard to believe that city parks were once public property.

“Hey Rose!” Her upbeat voice rings out in the empty playground. In all the post-apocalyptic movies I ever saw, survival was adrenaline-filled, screaming action. Oh how the victims wailed and protested their fate! In our dying world, the only loud voices come from those who can afford to simulate normalcy. The struggle to stay alive happens quietly, out of view.

Charlie waves at Caleb and they quickly become absorbed in some secret game. Lindsay and I watch them, trying to think of something to say.

“Charlie’s mini-pack’s cover is adorable, Rose! Where did you get it?” Lindsay never stops smiling.

“I ordered it from Oh2You. It’s a small business started by a mom. They have lots of cute retro stuff. Snoopy, SpongeBob, Paw Patrol…”

We’ve taken a wordless vow not to mention what’s in the mini-packs or why clear tubes extend from our children’s nostrils. Or our own. To name our collective tragedy is an act of treason among mothers of well-fed, breathing children. I force a content expression as we watch them struggle with the weight of their life-saving baggage. They climb up the metal rungs of the playground ladder slow as tortoises.

We talk about how quickly the boys grow out of their shoes and about the outrageous price of chocolate as we swat away swarms of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes may or may not carry encephalitis. Lindsay flicks one away from her oxygen tube with her long burgundy nails as if elegantly ashing a cigarette.

I can’t tell Lindsay about Jonathan. We haven’t known each other very long. There are things one doesn’t talk about with new mom friends, especially now.

“Big plans today?” She smiles a little too broadly when I check my watch again to make sure I don’t leave him alone so long that he begins to disintegrate.

Winter 2035: Five Years Before Upload

W hen Charlie was still little I got used to being alone in the house at night. With Jonathan gone for one of his evening Evolving Beings classes, I’d hear the tiny sounds of a child waking up from a nightmare. Slipping out of our half-empty bed, I’d drag myself to the rocking chair in Charlie’s room. I imagined swallowing up bad dreams like a python, ingesting wars, plagues, winged crocodiles, mushroom clouds… so when he startled himself awake with a weak little cry that must have been a full-throated scream in his dream, there was only mama, soft and quiet in her usual place.

I felt brave when I was with Charlie. In his eyes, I was mama the protector – a heroic avatar of myself. But when I wasn’t near him I didn’t know what I was – a jumble of half-articulated emotions, as incomprehensible as inkblots.

Once Charlie fell back asleep, I’d check my phone for all the disasters that needed my tending in the middle of the night. Global temperatures had long passed the perilous 2.5-degree increase. Scientists predicted worse food shortages, earth-scorching heatwaves, deteriorating air quality. From heroic nightmare devourer I devolved into compulsive eater: gorging on lab-made chocolate in our pristine kitchen, guilty and grateful for my gluttony while so many around the world starved.

How did my life become so distorted while Jonathan’s stayed the same? It was as if none of it was happening to him.

My mother always loved his “stability.” We never discussed his money, although that’s what she really meant. “You better hold on to that one,” she’d say after I told her about one of our fights. She’d remind me to “skip the temper tantrum” if I wanted a long-lasting marriage. Mom skipped her own tantrums for forty years before dad died of a stroke.

“Oh, I thought you’d be asleep,” Jonathan would always say, nonchalance personified, when I met him at the door. If I worked myself up enough to demand an explanation of why he was home after midnight, he’d reply with gentle reproach, “C’mon, babe. You’ll wake up the kid.”

Summer 2040: Six Weeks After Upload

I still haven’t told Charlie. How can I explain the digital ghost of a father who cries that he misses his body?

When I drop Charlie off at my in-laws for visits, Jonathan’s mother opens her mouth and inhales like she’s about to ask a question, but changes her mind. She still sees me as one of Jonathan’s impulsive mistakes. “Jonathan does what he wants,” she’d always say, seemingly about something else, but measuring me with a disapproving gaze. She tried to dissuade him from uploading and I think she blames me that he went through with it. Still, despite everything, she still has unshakable confidence that things will work out for them. It’s not my place to prove her wrong.

I log in at 4am, exactly four hours after our last conversation. Jonathan’s not there. I wait, staring down the darkened plastic dome. I have three hours before I have to get up. If I go back to sleep, he might begin to degrade. I imagine his stupid round face cracking like an eggshell. I scroll through email on my phone to kill time. It’s mostly advertisements, some of them for Soulscape, no personal messages at all.

Somehow I’ve lost touch with all my old friends. I’ve been wholly absorbed in the demands of the day: ordering our supplemental oxygen, arranging grocery deliveries, measuring Charlie’s vitals, making playdates, bringing him to school and back. I have only enough time and energy to take care of Charlie, and now Jonathan, too.

I keep looking over at the monitor in the corner to see if the blue light will flash, waiting for Jonathan’s frantic voice. Another hour goes by. Then two. At 6am – after I’ve resolved at least one hundred times to put away my phone and go to sleep, but can’t because I’m scared that he’s gone, and then livid at the possibility that he’s just fine – the blue light flashes.

“Rose, I have great news!” He sounds like himself again.

I wait.

“I just had the most amazing experience! Tawny… you remember Tawny from Evolving Beings? She’s finally uploaded! And they finished most of the simulation! We just jet-skied with dolphins and it felt so real! I can see my hands now too. Actually, I can see all of me! I’m like ten years younger!”

“Did the dolphins jet ski?” is all I manage before I disconnect.

I feel dizzy, bludgeoned by Jonathan’s brazen happiness. Outside the door I hear Charlie’s small footsteps. I open it to see him standing there, wide-eyed, in his red dinosaur pajamas.

“Were you just talking to dad?” he asks me.

And suddenly the truth is not that difficult to explain.

Summer 2039: One Year Before Upload

I always imagined that if Jonathan ever did something truly awful, like cheat on me or hit me, I would unleash the fury I’d been keeping caged up all these years. But when he told me of his plan to upload I could only stutter, “Can’t… can’t you wait? Until things get better?”

He’d always been so relentlessly optimistic, reassuring me that with our money and the almost-here scientific advancements we’d get through this. Now he said, “It’ll be easier for you. You and Charlie will have more real food, more water, more oxygen. And when Charlie’s old enough he’ll be able to upload too.”

He didn’t mention me.

“Are you leaving me?” I choked out. Was this divorce, infidelity, widowhood? I checked the house’s oxygen levels on my phone. They were normal, but I turned them up anyway.

“Until he’s eighteen, Charlie needs you. You get that.”He smacked his lips after sipping the last of his scotch and soda and left me sitting at the kitchen table.

Panic attacks had become so common in children that you could get anti-anxiety medications over the counter. We’d give Charlie a daily Panic Panda gummy to help keep him level. The temptation to start chewing a handful was overwhelming, but instead I whispered word combinations that I’ve found to calm him – “emerald city,” “busy bee,” “cloud cake” – repeating them like incantations until he stopped shaking. But I was full of fear too. I couldn’t imagine taking care of Charlie alone.

“But why now, Jonathan?” I pleaded with him from the kitchen doorway. “It just doesn’t make sense. The technology is so new.” I imagined his mother’s voice singing in a broken-record chant Jonathan does what he wants, Jonathan does what he wants, Jonathan does…

“I’ve just evolved beyond this flesh prison.” He said like it should be obvious to anyone with a brain.

“Shouldn’t we speak to a counselor, a doctor?” I tried to put obstacles in his way, to at least slow him down if I couldn’t prevent it. A flesh prison for fuck’s sakes? A motorcycle, a tattoo, even a younger mistress would’ve been easier to tolerate than this version of a midlife crisis.

“Rose,” he groaned, “I’ve done my own research. I know what I’m doing. Besides…” He paused and looked away.

“Besides what? What did you want to say?”

He shrugged. “You’re not stupid, Rose. Eventually we all starve or suffocate.”

I called my mother. She didn’t understand anything about Soulscape. As always, when I complained about Jonathan’s neglect, she told me that I shouldn’t hem him in, that dad traveled a lot for work and they were happy together, so why couldn’t I just let it go? I tried to explain that he was permanently freezing his body and uploading his mind so he could exist in a virtual afterlife; without me, without Charlie.

Mom perked up at the mention of afterlife. She had grown even more religious since dad died. “Oh honey, have faith. You’ll see Jonathan again! Just like I’ll see your daddy in heaven.”

If they ever did meet in heaven, dad would be dismissively nodding into an open newspaper while mom tried to get his attention with all the interesting things she saw in purgatory.

Winter 2040: Six Months After Upload

I have a choice to make. I can let Charlie upload like his father or keep him in his body to suffer and die. Each choice is a gamble.

Unlike Jonathan I don’t believe in good luck. I’ve never been one to take unnecessary risks. Never skydived. Never did drugs. My parachute wouldn’t open. My first hit of acid would send me on a bad trip to hell.

Jonathan liked to mock my cautious nature, but as I take deep breaths to calm myself in the mornings, I think that perhaps my fear is my strength. I need to make a plan. We have money. But that won’t matter. Soon marauders will begin scavenging wealthy neighborhoods. The elderly and single mothers will be the easiest to rob, possibly to kill. My mother moves in with us.

She tells me to pray. Pray to whom? If there’s a creator, it can’t possibly be omnipotent and loving. I picture a pimply kid, an angry teenager clicking away to code the most interesting collapse of civilization he can imagine. Maybe his asshole father just uploaded himself and left his family behind. The great simulator to whom we appeal with our problems might not give a shit. He might even want to hurt us. Creation turned out to be a cheap trick.

And on the eighth day God learned to code… I want some of that power before I’m struck down, before I’m extinguished, squashed, splattered by a hack deity.

I don’t believe in miracles. Jonathan did. The optimist, the happy wanderer, the lucky fool. He trusted that everything would turn out okay. At least for him.

I take the Soulscape contract out of its envelope. I couldn’t bear to read it before, but now I’m ready. So much fine print. I haven’t heard from Jonathan in months. But we’re still married. According to the contract, uploaded beings may still need help from us flesh prisoners occasionally. The contract designates me as the simulation architect should anything go wrong at Soulscape. He trusted me when he signed this.

I leave Charlie with my mother for the day and show up at Soulscape HQ with extra oxygen canisters. The building is surprisingly empty. Business must not be going well. Or maybe it’s going so great they’re all digital nomads two-point-oh now.

The same guy who made the house call to explain about Jonathan’s upkeep is working the front desk.

“Hi Leif!” I sing-song his nametag. “I’m Rose Agape. We spoke on the phone. I’d like to discontinue my husband’s network subscription.” I say it as if this is a routine request.

Leif frowns. “But that will make him go dark.”

“He gave me program maintenance authority.” I keep talking like I can’t I see the concern on his face. “I’ll be taking over as simulation architect.”

“We intended that for emergencies only. If we lose power, or the upload feels unsafe in their current—”

“The contract states that you’ll train me to reprogram his simulation.” I put up a finger before he can interrupt. “I know that something is wrong with my husband. It’s been months since he’s contacted us. That’s not like him. I mean, he has a son.”

Mostly true. There’s been something wrong with my husband for years, and technically he’s a father. It’s exactly like him to disappear from our lives, but Leif doesn’t need to know that.

Leif sighs, considering what I just said.

“I’m going to need someone to walk me through it,” I add. I hoist three full oxygen canisters, one by one, up on his desk. His eyes light up. He audibly sucks in air through his tubes and actually looks relieved. I just made his decision a lot easier.

“Alright ma’am, let’s schedule your programming sessions. It shouldn’t take too long. But you do realize that once you activate home programming he will be cut off from everyone in his simulated network? No other uploaded beings will be with him in the world you build. He’ll be alone.”

I smile and nod. “Yes. With his family.”

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