Kelsey Chen

Last night you were straight out of college, I think, with a fresh new cut and everything—new suit, new job, new hope, new girl. I remember she was dressed in blue and very demure. I liked her, and your dad would’ve too. Last night you walked through the door of my apartment, leaving it swinging in that way I don’t like, and said, ma, I’m in love. For some reason, our kitchen was painted a neon yellow so electric it was almost green. And then, millions of years later, the whole apartment flashed into a deep, dark magenta. You were gone and I was on the floor, face-down, unsure how I got there. Those are the things I can remember. I can’t remember if you died. I don’t think you did—not in front of me, at least. This is different from the usual.

This is the first time that you aren’t murdered in front of me. Every night, it happens almost the same way: You bring your fiancé home, and I like her. You leave her with me and head out. Time passes uncannily in the kitchen, me and her. She and the room both undulate for a while. The kitchen is always blue, she is always in red, and the clock on the wall above our dinner table is always glowing violet. Something always compels me to walk into your bedroom, the one that has looked the same since you were twelve, all baby blue and lined with these little baseball trophies from that one summer you played in the little league. I leave your fiancé and her red dress in the kitchen. And you’re there, and sometimes there’s no one else there, and sometimes there’s a hundred men there—all equally gruesome and pale—and you’re always dying. You die in different ways, but your skull always cracks in the same spot, right above your right ear. Tai Yang, it’s called. The acupuncture point named after the sun, my son.

Unfailingly, I’ve dreamed your death every night for six years, so I feel disoriented at this sudden new twist. I never quite remember everything when I wake up, but your death, I never forget. So today I am particularly shaky, particularly unsure. The neon glow of this dream is still echoing when I climb out of my sheets. This is an uncertainty I cannot take, so I stumble quickly out of bed, still tangled in the sheets, and into the living room.

The System sits in the middle of the room, small and white, as it always has since its installation, and I grab for it with a desperation that I have only felt twice: the first was six years ago when I told them over the phone they must’ve called the wrong mother of the wrong Vinnie; the second, also six years ago, was when you were murdered the second time, the first night I slept after your first death. I’ve spent more time with this little white box—and you—than any other living person since then. System’s in my hands, but I forget momentarily what I’m to do with it, so, instinctually, like a child, I cradle it against my chest and huddle my knees around it. By this time, the urgency’s fading and a familiar ache returns, leaking a bit from my eyes, but mostly, I think, flowing from the cavity of my chest onto the carpet. And I hold System to me in that spot, because it staunches the flow a bit and I don’t want to soil the rug.

You are dead—I know that. You have been dead and dying for six years. I am not weeping because I think you to be alive, I am weeping because you are dead, but might no longer be dying.

I feel the same way you probably did when you were three and burst into tears after seeing snow for the first time—terrified and desperately curious at the same time. I can’t bring myself to move, freezing in the same way you did at three, as if staying still would quell the frigid uncertainty quivering in the air.

So I just sit for a while, with you in my dreams in my System in my hands. It’s cold, there in the living room.

System is something of a miracle. I remember my ambivalence and your fervor when it was first released: You were still alive then and System wasn’t called System yet. I was in my old armchair draped with the knitted blankets your grandma sent us when you barged into the living room, jumping with excitement, a newspaper clipping clutched in your hands. Ma, you won’t believe this. You waved the paper, like satin in its sheerness—you know how cheap print companies are—in my face, yelling. SONY is developing a new product, ma. Voyage, they called it then, and it was still in its beta stage. You waved it again, still hopping from foot to foot in eagerness. Ma, don’t you ever wonder what happens in your dreams? Don’t you wonder if you dream? I’ve always wondered if I don’t dream at all or if I just don’t remember—ma, are you even paying attention? I had fallen into a daze, momentarily, distracted by the rhythmic fluttering of the paper. No, Vinnie, I don’t. What good does dreaming do you? Will it get you through college? Buy you a car? A house? Get you a wife?

You huff in impatience. But, ma, you don’t understand. You love movies, yeah? Those crusty black and white relics. What if you could upload and watch your dreams—or my dreams—like a movie? Better than a movie. We could live our dreams, mama, you say. You’re thoughtful for a second. You look at the ceiling and say, I wonder if they’d be in color?

So you apply to be a tester, because you’re a quantum virtuality major, you say, it’s just for the science of it—for the educational purposes, ma. For networking. I could get a job with SONY—think of that, I’d have you out of this tiny apartment and into one of those big houses by the seaside.

You were wildly ambitious, because you were young. On your first day beta testing, you left before I’d woken and came back past dinner time. I thought you’d be bursting with joy and filled with stories for me, but instead, you leaned against the doorway, framed by the night, and watched me with this strange sort of stare, disgruntled and furious and endlessly disappointed. Ma, you said, in a voice as distant as your expression, I really don’t dream. There’s nothing. There was nothing.

We watched each other in silence for an indeterminate length of time.

But you weren’t downcast for long, because you were young. The next day, you were happy again, dreaming up your next ambition. Who said my son didn’t dream? That was all you did.

I put System back on the floor. Remembering the you of your lifetime I do on my own; it’s the you of my dreamtime that I need System’s help in finding. Reaching behind my right ear, I push my hair to the side so I can get to the little white nub attached to the base of my skull. It pops right off, like it always does, and I place it gingerly in its complementary cavity in System. It’s very white and very shiny, I notice. It’s a strange observation to make now and so obvious in its simplicity. I blink slowly, feeling lashes against my cheeks. See you soon, child.

Eyes still half-lidded, I press down on the nub; it clicks; System blinks to life, soft blue glow; it says: Good Morning, Lily. The time now is six thirty-five AM, pacific time. Please wear your Accompanying Device to begin. I comply. I lift Accompaniment from the coffee table next to me where it sits; full, smooth, white, featureless mask snaps around my face; it clicks; System says: Welcome back, Lily.

I don’t feel welcomed back. There is none of that necessary certainty that System usually has, none of the assurance that I will see you again, that you will die. That I will watch you die a million possible ways. It’s odd, I know, to have become so used to your continuous murder, but it was a constant, the one thing I could never change, that would never let itself be changed. You left me, and suddenly, I was unsure of everything. But your dying-ness, your small mercy of lingering at the midpoint between dead and gone, I was sure of. I was grateful for. I was sure that you were still in the middle of dying, because I saw it every night. I knew you’d come back to me, so you could die again. If you stop dying, will you still be in my dreams? I’m not sure. It seems naïve to hope for both your presence and your life. Your dying-ness was already a compromise: always being murdered in exchange for always being there.

If even the son of my dreams stops dying, what will I have left? What is left? What am I to do when you finally finish dying, son? It seems to me now, ridiculously and exaggeratedly I know, that you are leaving me the second time—no, the two-thousand one-hundred and ninetieth time, and maybe, terrifyingly, the last time.

You’d have thought me to be silly, an old woman prone to overreaction.

There is an indescribable pain behind my right eye. This is the first time in a while that I’ve felt so excruciatingly unsure of what System will show me.

I lie down and roll to my side, exhausted, despite having just woken up. Time in the living room has become slow-moving and glacial. I wait to be pulled under. Limbs are sinking into the floor, which has suddenly taken on a spongey, carnivorous quality. It feels a little like I’m being swallowed alive by some large creature. I’m pondering what creature might be able to swallow a human, small now in her grief, when the dingy carpet of the living room consumes me entirely—and I fall through the paper-thin floor into System’s world, my dream-world.

I’m seated now, at the small dining table tucked in our kitchen. It’s the exact same as it was before you left for college, but the colors are all off. The walls are a yellow so bright my vision wavers, and everything else, save the clock, is dyed with a faint suggestion of the same hue, as if the shade were so insistent that it had inadvertently spread a filter over the whole apartment. The clock is pink and pulsating. In fact, I now notice, the whole room beats like a heart. But it’s mistimed—it’s not my heart, it’s someone else’s.

I smooth the tablecloth in front of me, notice that it would’ve been a soft baby blue, had the electric glow of the room not tainted it into a strange, unsettling green. It’s a velvet cloth, except, instead of changing into a deeper green when I stroke the fine hairs of its surface in the wrong direction, it turns red. My fingertips are leaving red streaks behind in the fabric when you walk into the kitchen and slide into the chair opposite me. You dangle your arm across the back of your chair indolently and grin at me.

“Guess what, ma? I got the job.” Your feigned casualness can’t mask the immense excitement in your eyes. I didn’t notice before what you were wearing, but now it becomes clear that you came straight from your interview, still in your suit and nice shoes. The yellow of the room is dyeing the white of your shirt a blinding, reflective shade.

I want this moment to stretch a little longer, to look at you in your happiness a little longer, but that’s not the way System works. SONY dabbles in the business of exact replicas, not of chosen fantasies. Involuntarily, my fingers stop moving and my mouth opens.

“Vinnie—I—that’s amazing—” I cut myself off and rise, lurching, ostensibly in excitement, towards you and clasp your hands tightly in my own. Bug of the system: I can’t feel the same emotions my dream-self feels. Or perhaps it was designed, to minimize the risks of watching nightmares through System. Replicating terror beyond conscious imagination, I suppose, would be bad for business.

You smile at me even wider and laugh. We stay like this for some time, frozen, you mid-laugh, me tilting precariously towards you, held up by your grip and the strange physics of the non-physical world. I stare at the clock above the table. My mouth is still open from the sentence I never finished. If not for the pulsing of the room, I’d think I accidentally paused System.

The whole room is pounding—beating to the rhythm of my heart now, I notice suddenly. The second-hand ticks and I look back at what should have been you, but I see me, instead. It’s strange to see myself cloned, but it’s a dream, so strange is normal. I watch myself open my mouth to speak.

“—I’m so proud. So proud,” the me across from me finishes my previous self-interrupted sentence, looking at me, impossibly moved. I am getting an odd feeling now, a budding suspicion, about this. My duplicate self is looking at me the same way I used to look at you. This vague discomfort amplifies when I open my mouth and your laugh comes out.

I almost want to laugh—or cry, or choke—at the ludicrousness of this situation that System has managed to realize. I didn’t even think it possible to switch one non-existent consciousness, a bootleg one built from remembrances and code written by SONY employees, with a transplanted one, in two dream bodies. It’s not even a switch really, because there was only one consciousness in the first place—mine. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for System and I to inhabit you now, in this way: because your insides are hollow.

This is wrong, and I want to cry, but I don’t know why, and anyways, I can’t, because I’m in System. I should send a complaint to Customer Service. It feels blasphemous—some sort of unforgivable violation, but I can’t think of what might have been violated. I’m hit with a wave of dizziness that feels like a strange variation of déjà vu, except I’m remembering—dreaming—something that didn’t happen to you, not me.  

I want to stop this. System is scaring me. But I’ve forgotten how to pause System, because the goddamned pulsing of the room keeps distracting me. I feel more flustered than I have in ages, trapped inside this enormous neon metronome.

The second-hand ticks again, the rhythm of the room is wrong again, and I’m looking at you again, back in my own dream-body. This is not as much of a relief as it should have been. The fading flash of a camera; afterimages quivering in the air; I feel like I’ve taken a psychedelic, even though the dreamscape is steady.

I blink; I’m back in my seat at the dinner table again and you are gone.

I smooth the tablecloth in front of me. It’s a velvet cloth, except, instead of changing into a deeper green when I stroke the fine hairs of its surface in the wrong direction, it turns red. My fingertips are leaving red streaks behind in the fabric when you barge in through the front door, leaving it swinging in that way I don’t like. My eyebrows crease a little and I can tell I’m readying myself to scold you for being so aggressive with the old door to this old unit, but you look ridiculously, unbelievably happy, so I settle back down in my seat. You walk towards me in big strides.

“Ma, I’m in love,” you say, “and she said yes.” You tremble a bit, hands clenching, and tell me, “I’m getting married tonight, mama.”

I cover my mouth and look to the entrance of our home, where a girl has appeared in front of, having apparently been swept inside by the swinging of the door. She’s a little anxious and keeps flattening her already-very-pristine baby blue skirt. Disconcertingly, it’s not been dyed by the yellow. You get up to go welcome her, arms outstretched.

We’re frozen again. I keep close track of the room’s rhythm. It’s still off beat, thank god. I blink; she’s gone; you’re back in your seat.

“Ma, I’m in love,” you say, “and she said yes.” You tremble a bit, hands clenching, and tell me, “I’m getting married tonight, mama.”

I cover my mouth again and there she is at the door again, as wispy as before, this time in purple, still unmarred by the glow of the room. You get up again, arms lifting as before.

We freeze; I blink; she’s gone; you’re back in your seat.

“Ma, I’m in love,” you say, “and she said yes.” You tremble a bit, hands clenching, and tell me, “I’m getting married tonight, mama.”

I cover my mouth again but stay staring hard at you this time, probably equal parts reproachful (for telling me so last-minute), disbelieving, and exhilarated. You smile openly back at me and stand up, walking towards me, reaching with your arms to embrace me. But dream-me didn’t reach out last night, so I don’t either. You don’t know how badly I want to hug you back, how much I want to take you into my arms, how much I resent System at this moment for disallowing me the littlest, the most innocuous of freedoms. I stay in my seat, arms crossing stubbornly, glaring at you. This is probably because I am petty, probably because I’m holding a grudge for your last-minute pronouncement, probably because you’ve not asked me for my blessings—probably because of all of these, Vinnie, but most probably because I’ve already been granted so many mercies that the heavens have decided I should not receive another.

“Aw c’mon, ma. Don’t be like that,” you grin sheepishly, rubbing the back of your head. I’m still glaring, I think, but I can’t tell precisely what expression is on my face right now.

Abruptly, you stop rubbing the back of your head. Frozen, again. This is a strange new innovation of my mind—you and I never used to freeze like this. I wait to see what happens next.

The second-hand ticks; my eyes shut in the beginning of a blink; when they open, things are magenta and I’m looking at the floor and the side of the kitchen, left ear pressed firmly against the linoleum, deathly still. This is the magenta I remembered, kaleidoscopic and constantly shifting. It’s disturbing. I can’t focus. You’re gone, I think, but I can’t particularly tell because I’m staring in the same direction and refuse to shift my gaze. I don’t know why I seem to have taken such sudden interest in the floor. It’s white, tiled, and very clean.

Suddenly, I realize I’ve been so distracted by the rippling violets and the pitch-dark crevices between the tiles of my kitchen floor that I’ve forgotten to keep track of the pounding of the walls. It’s slower, I think. Louder. A little irregular, maybe. Growing more lethargic. The time between beats is lengthening. I can’t tell exactly though, because the swelling and ebbing of the magenta tide has grown more violent, and there’s this strange pounding sensation in my head—an acute hammering ache in my right temple. I think it might be terribly painful, but I honestly couldn’t say if the pain is coming from my body or the endlessly colliding distortions of the purples crawling across the walls.

The tempo of this rhythmic throbbing is the same as the room’s, I realize with a jolt. And—and my heart’s.

There is a jerking sensation in my chest cavity soon after I come to this realization, a small convulsion of sorts. The magentas have reached a crescendo on the walls and have begun to darken; it looks as if a dark wash has been inked across the room, like a ghost-print twice-after on a printmaking press. Another small spasm; a full-body shudder; three involuntary jerking motions in my right pinky; two in my left calf. My fingers are curling in and I think I’m trying to hold onto something but I can’t remember what and it is so important for me to remember but I can’t I just can’t there is a guttural panic in my veins and I know at this moment it is unequivocally imperative to hold on this will be the most important moment of my life and hers and his hers mine but my fingers are stuck, they are stuck.

I cannot see the tiles anymore.

The time now is nine forty-two PM, pacific time, says System. How was your experience, Lily?

I open my eyes; take Accompaniment off my face; lift the small round Dream-reader from System, place it back under my ear. My face and neck are wet. I’m freezing. It’s nine and dark out again, so I pick myself and my sheets up off the living-room floor and head back to bed. I’m not shaky anymore, because I know you’ll still be there tonight, you’ll die tonight, and I’ll die as you tonight.

Sun : light :: son : life.