Does the xtractor see the mirror clearly?

  A familiar refle. A familiar refra. Like standiween two mirrors. The extractor recorded his suspis, his anguish, his limerend lust, and then, when Rory led him, hand in hand, like a couple fag the horror of some terminal illness he had just been diagnosed with, down that hall to Dr. X, Luke wondered if the extractor extrag itself would cause some kind of explosion, but he was disappointed.

  The down-there Luke y oable, and became an up-there Luke as Dr. X guided him through the process for the first time. The extraost high Luke noticed, focused on peeling off his feelings and fears, and blurred everything else, from the waiting room to even the good Dr.’s voice, so that it became a story of a scared man, with no risk of being anything close to an expose on the predatory inations of mem extractors.

  Not that tippy top Luke gave a shit. If he really wanted revenge on Dr. X, he’d just drag him into a Hardworld and burn his face off.

  Suddenly, both higher-up Lukes were watg from the point of view of a third, who’s entire world was warm sunlight glowing through pstic blinds on solid forms of pure color, and a voice that wove through the world and was the foundation of it.

  Both higher Lukes began to sob, one a deep body rog moaning fit that was twice as devastating because of its uedness, the shock of seeing someone you had fotten was once your world and who’s absence from the st decades of your existenly intensified their importance, and the other a sob like deep quiet breathing, like accepting the death of someone or something or some time that you had held out hope might maybe possibly would somehow return.

  Supreme Luke noticed, through subdued tears, that the reflected extractor had gotten a little too excited and gone searg associated memory for fshes of a funeral. Sorry bro, no such luck. She’s still alive and well. Talk to her every other week and she never hears a word I say.

  However, down their Luke had been too preoccupied with the g and shit to notice, so superior extractor trimmed any evidence of its past self overstepping out of the mem, and moved on.

  Afterward, she had held him, whispered that his memories would now be used to help some hypothetical poor orphan feel what it was like to have a mother, and then whisked him off to some café floating above the pastel suburb zone of the Allworld.

  He asked her if that settled it, and she ughed and said almost, but not to worry about it, that it would be enough to keep the creditors off her back, and that money in this world had never really made her happy, and then she kissed him, and they had flown off to Gunmaze, her final barb firmly set.

  As the extractor peeled away the days, Luke saw that his memory was terrible at judging time, but in this case it was like an inverse of the distortion that had surrouheir first period of honeymoon bliss.

  It had been almost aire month, the extractor tallying his touches with the Real like a ae, though in memory it seemed much shorter, the days and versations squeezed together, ultimately just a bare ragged portion of his Spirits time between two doses of Bliss.

  In another paradox of memory, to down there Luke, the days dragged on like years. They flew around the ball, acted as extras in Sims, spent the cash on drinks in the Allclub that tasted faint as carbonated water to Luke, aed the limits of sex in a world without flesh.

  But, of course, something was missing. Down there Luke got agitated. Rory tried not to notice, or preteo try not to notice, then got agitated or preteo get agitated, then they had their first fight, then they made up like two pendulums pulled apart crashing together again, and thearted it all ain.

  Somewhere in the middle of it, top-shelf Luke had an epiphany. An epiphany that, like all great realizations, it seemed, felt less like a relief or an ah-ha and more like hearing the click of a ndmine under your feet.

  He saw the Luke dowrying to find the words to expin to her that something was missing, something he couldn’t name, and no I don’t know what it is or I would tell you, and her sayihen why are you taking it out on me, and him saying he wasn’t, but yelling as he said it, kind of defeating the point, and then anht, and top shelf Luke realized that, while down there Luke was slowly ing to the realization that what was missing looked like a glowing light in the dark that you flew towards forever, what was really missing was no such thing.

  What was missing was a warm light hiding behind the dark bck irises of her eyes. What was missing was her love. What she was hiding from him was herself. And when, as the Luke down there sobbed and screamed a and came bad apologized and doubled down, she hid further in the deep recesses of her mind, lest her mark actally stumble upon it, down there Luke decided to go after the warm light that came from little crystals handed out in twilight colored dens at the edges of the Otherworld.

  About the thousandth time she asked ‘what is it?’, which had really been, the extractor told him dryly, only the third time, Luke told her he couldn’t get that Bliss shit out of his head, and she had only said, ‘well, lets go and make our visit then,’ and made him feel, somehow, on the way there that this was his fault, and she was sacrifig so much for his desires, mostly by sitting still as a corpse on the way there, and not even looking at him as he took the crystal in his hand.

  Or, was it something else, her frowning like a kid lying in bed watg their parent fawhem just before leaving for work, knowing the cough was fake and they would soon be on the Pystation. Was there a feeling of guilt in it? Any at all?

  Before he could figure it out, she was gone, and after a quick fsh of a light, the extractor's choseaphor for Bliss, down there Luke ‘awoke’, and staring up at the strange projes the proprietors of the Bliss den had thought should py on the roof for some reason, like clips of vacations pyed with the lens at the wrong angle and covered in dust, he said out loud,

  “You might as well have left me on that fug roof, all the differe made,”

  But when he lifted his head, he found his er of the dey, and in her absend the ing down feeling of failing again to catch the light, he felt about the worst pain possible in a world made of dreams and wishes.

  Then came the guilt, which was somehow worse.

  While down there Luke anguished and paced, then screamed into a unicator he had never had to do more than whisper in while they were temporarily separated in the Allclub, then got no answer and started to sob, up there Luke let go of his own memory, and the extractor really kicked it into overdrive.

  He had learned, or been told at some point, that the extractor’s first job was to sever the memory from your w, active mind, and then talk only to the subscious, who had less hangups about spilling your deepest secrets out into the void, and in fact often e, which Luke had some sympathy for. Ay that spent its entire existerying to unicate via symbols and dreams and impulses to some dumb creature prised mostly of denial that it was doomed to live beh, could now speak freely of its wants and memories and all that shit to something that listened and even asked questions. Must make the shadow Self feel like a ed wife getting all the attention online.

  So, as up there Luke looked away in disgust, the extractor slid over the days of agony in record time, till it hit a bump.

  Down there Luke, having gotten it into his head that her reason for abandoning him was the massive debt she was running from, had returo the little square of shadow, and Dr. X, and the extractor ainstakingly s the faces and other particurs.

  This time, Luke had sold some of his exceptionally active teenage years. Aire half-decade of easy sex and drugs and fights and even a brief stint as the school dealer, till all the texts and phone calls made him feel more like a secretary than Scarface.

  Another hiccup, a pause and a refra, like the extractor had run over a ndmihe memories poured out of somewhere, one of the two Lukes or maybe even a third, and the extractor tried to hack through them like a Vietnam vet in the jungle ao the relevant facts.

  First, that down there Luke had only sold about a month's worth of those memories, and sed, that he had been advised by the kind Dr. X, that spending too much time at on the extractor could have disastrous sequences for the Spirit.

  “You spend too much time in dead memories, the mind makes them the world, and you t get out.”

  The voi the extracted mem was hollow, monotone, pared to the easy ce eg in up there Luke’s head, and said more like an absolute warning than the “hey man, it’s your funeral,” tone up there Luke actually remembered. Not to mention the fact that he retty sure he had actually sold all of freshmahat sitting and spent half the day in some kind of recovery room in the back of Dr. X’s cave, where high school Luke and present-day Luke argued and cried and the Spirit went bad forth between them, uo settle on a single POV.

  But, up there Luke let the edits pass without a word, and dowhe story picked up again, essentially unged, with Luke putting the word out to every club, ruin, bliss den, and odd shopkeeper they had visited together during the good times, that he had a lot of money with Rory’s name on it.

  The extractor revealed, like a cold diagnosis, that she had waited exactly three days to e find him, ae the fact that, in his panicked addict brained frenzy, he had fotten to leave a location or time for her to meet him, she had picked him out of the pulsing masses of the Allclub and motioowards aor.

  Time slowed, memory bloomed, and Luke could imagihe white noise hum at the bottom of it all rising into the roar of an engine pushed to its limits as the extractor kicked into high gear.

  She stood in the softened light of her craft, this time furnished like an art deco office building, arms crossed, cold eyes watg, waiting, as he tried to expin what he had done and how it had all been for her.

  It took him a moment to notice the ge, which seemed like magic to Luke and Luke. Her eyes were bck. Her cheeks less rosy, less pronounced, lips not as full, her hair a soft brown pulled ba a bun. Eveits were smaller.

  And when she spoke, finally, there was a rough gravellyo it that threw out the clear sing-songy bell toned voice that shined ser-like in his memory, and from then on, when he fantasized about her, rahrough all those sarios that he used to paper over the wounds, it was the only voice he could ever hear, the first one lost like a dream to an arm.

  It was obvious, ter, that she really had no choice. Her pixie dreamgirl schtick could work while Luke was unsure of the reality of it all, but after Bliss, even the most rational Spirits find it near impossible to believe the Other is a dream they could ever wake up from. Her old visage would have stuck out, been ridiculous, maybe even loosened her hold on him.

  So there she was, somewhat closer to the Real her, maybe, telling him,

  “I don’t want it.”

  Is someoing your memories? ime, Luke reaches out, and finding no ohere to catch him, falls. episode, Once, an addict.