More real than Real

  Gradie’s apartment faced the highway over a sliver of woodnd ging to a storm-drain creek. Foot beaten trails cut across the rough grass and tall weeds. Every time he looked out the window, some new scrap of trash, the bright white of a fast-food bag or the shine of a beer , had sprouted like fungi. He never saw the people that dropped them. He never saw anyone. Living here felt like flying through spa a drywall box, the atmosphere long evaporated into the washed-out sky.

  The “luxury” apartments on the higher ridge across the highway showed no signs of life beyond a few warm yellow squares at night. There was a housing developmeo his plex, but he could only see the roofs if he looked for them, rough shapes of sandpaper tiles peeking through the branches of a live oak.

  His job was less than half a mile down the highway, but despite spending hours staring out the sed-story office windows, he never saw any sign that his apartment eveed. Just strip malls and car dealerships across the six dusty nes of r crete. Once, he had dreamed of jumping out the window and flying straight up into the air. There had been no sign of his home and nothing but the same sery out to the edge of the world.

  The Wal Mart and it’s sug strip malls where he bought everything he didn’t order online was about a mile off the highway, and his best friend’s house another mile past that, but he hadn’t seen him face to fa a month.

  Most days he went straight home, worked out, got online, maybe chipped away at one of his hundred half-finished short stories or the big space opera hen a sudden sparse sleep and right back down the highway to work. The weekends were just longer spaces iween.

  So, he sat at the window, when not staring at a s, watg the headlights stream by, trying to believe there was something more out there beyond his little box.

  He blew the st of the cigarette out through the bent er of the mesh and fihe whiskey sour. It was almost one in the m. Officially Monday. The whine of his puter fan died a him in the silence, ying on the bed staring up at nothing. He had tacked thick sheets over the windows and the room was cave dark. They did the trick. He fell asleep seamlessly.

  He was ba Michael’s craft, drink still in hand, with Michael still in the same spot, watg him. The twments of memory oher side of his waking day fused together, and his entire life in the Real, faded, softened, until it felt like a dream. He khe way knowledge in a dream came without reason, that just as no time had passed iherwrorld, no time would pass in the Real while he was here.

  “Wow.” He had spent his entire day in the Real without ever knowing this pce existed, or remembering what had happeo him here. Now that he had returned, it was like he had never left. He felt there were two of him; one in the real, doomed to never know this pce exists, and another, here, omnist in parison.

  A sadness came over him. A feeling of separation from that other him. Seeing himself move about the real world, ignorant of himself, he felt pity, longing, struck through with something like regret.

  “It gets easier,” Michael said, standing, sensing Gradie’s thoughts. “At first it feels like you’re split in two, but over time you find the on ground. The element of yourself that remains stant. What we call your spirit.”

  “So, you never remember this pce? In the real world?”

  “No. It’s not possible once you get down to it. There would be all kinds of viotions of causality if you could remember, because of how time works.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Fet it.” Michael waved out to the window. “For now, it’s better if you just stretch ys. Get a feel for this world and enjoy yourself.”

  “Enjoy myself doing what?” He remembered the powerless feeling on the rooftop and the embarrassment of the club.

  Whatever you want.” Michael said.

  “Don’t I have to pay? I thought you said memories were like money here.”

  “Yea, but we use a unit, mem, that approximates—”

  “What if I don’t want to sell my memories?”

  Michael studied him again.

  “There’s still plenty of free fun to be had, but you might ge your mind when you see what’s for sale.”

  “How do I know what my memories are worth? Won’t I get ripped off?” It seemed a stupid thing to be ed with. Shouldn’t a dreamworld be without limits? Maybe that’s how you k was real.

  “You easily find a Mem trader. Might want to shop around for the best price, though. Like I said, lots of freebies. Especially for a newborn like you. They like to get you hooked if they .”

  The world outside rose in the window as the craft desded to the p surface, glittering and chaotic. Gradie remembered the Allclub, what those other people had felt like. Like they wao get inside him and take what they could find.

  “Why did you do this? Help me?” He asked.

  “Everyone who es to this pce gets a hand at the beginning. Kind of an unwritten rule, I guess. Paying it forward.”

  Gradie didn’t buy it.

  “And?”

  Michael smiled. “And,” He faced Gradie squarely. “I think I could use you.”

  “For what?” But he already knew.

  “Oeam. I found you in a Hardworld, which is rare. I think you would take to the work naturally.”

  Gradie felt himself sinking. Of course. A world of endless possibility and freedom and the leader of a band of gun toting interdimensional assassins asks him to joieam.

  “I am going insane.” It didn’t ring as true now, after a day ba his own skin, with the gap of memory betweewo versions of himself, and in the persistence of the halluation. He couldn’t believe he was going crazy, but it felt stupid to believe it was real. Michael brushed off his crisis with a nod.

  “Right, still getting used to it. That’s why I said to take some time to explet a feel for this world. Here.”

  Michael handed him a business card that read:

  LIQUID LIGHT

  HARDWORLDERS * SEEKERS

  Crystal Fountain Tower, F96 Suite LL

  14:30 X 35, Allcity

  The text seemed to be carved out of the card, and through the cuts, he saw water refleg a bright sunlight, as if the card ortal to a midday o.

  “What is this?”

  “My card. Press the text if you ge your mind, and it’ll call me.”

  A door opened in the wall and the Allcity glittered outside under a high noon sun. It took a moment for his mind tanize what he saw into near or far, massive or small, moving or just vibrating i all seemed liquid. He felt liquid. Like if he went out there he would melt into it. Once again, Michael seemed to read his mind.

  “Don’t paniothing out there hurt you. But uand, the mind is not fio its shell. Here it touch the world directly.”

  Which means the world touch my mind.

  The idea of that writhing ndscape slipping into his head like electrified doubt or living memory terrified him, but something else, a hope for what it could be, urged him on.

  “All right. See you ter.” He leaned forward and fell out the door.

  Gradie's apartment and office exist in our world. you find it? ime, Do we build castles in the sky? Episode: Dreamworld