The Horton Dilemma [ONC 2022]

EPILOGUE: MAYBE IT WAS ALL A TRIP

10 MORE YEARS LATER |

Nakomi and I sit at The Coast, drinking Meal Champagnes.

"I still can't believe they've actually figured out how to create a meal in champagne form," I say. "I'm definitely having only one of these."

Nakomi agrees, laughing. Although she's got noticeable wrinkles on her face, she still looks stunning.

"Do you remember when we came here all those years ago?" I ask. "After my failed TEDTalk?"

"Your failed TEDTalk? Izzy, that talk was incredible. Everyone was so confused when you ultimately decided to not go to Mars. I mean, we should be glad you didn't go, with what happened with the asteroid. It's so disturbing to me that they didn't have enough room on any of the spacecraft to get everyone off that planet. We should say a prayer for the Queen of Leeches, even though I know you never liked her..."

Nakomi just keeps talking, but my mind is in a daze. Finally, I interrupt her.

"Nakomi, it was a failed TEDTalk. I got the jitters. I couldn't even go through with it!"

"Izzy, are we living in the same world? You killed that talk. We can probably find a video of it online. Look..." She gets out her pocket computer and quickly finds the video. "See?"

As she puts the screen in my face, an image of myself greets me. I say, "In three months, on September 23rd, 2050, I will quarantine for a period of fourteen days before jumping on a rocket and blasting off to Mars, where the second Martian colony awaits me. Gordon Goby, the tech entrepreneur funding the colony, personally extended me an invitation, seeking my expertise..."

My hand goes to my forehead, where sweat has already formed. I feel overall clammy, nearly nauseated. "This isn't what happened," I say. But at the same time, it feels so familiar. Not just the speech—I had written it and practiced it countless times, after all, so it would be familiar—but the entire scene.

"Are you okay?" Nakomi asks.

"I don't know."

"Maybe you should go to a geriatrician specializing in dementias," she says, a little too nonchalantly.

"I'm only 49!"

"We're old, Izzy. We are. You know, I always thought the reason you didn't go to Mars was because of that terrible Vivectica™ trip you had, where you got eaten by grasshoppers. It really put you into a moral conundrum regarding your work, didn't it? I always felt bad for forcing you to do that. I guess this is me apologizing. I think that kind of put me into a moral conundrum about my work."

"Yes...I saw grasshoppers," I say slowly. "And you saw...fairies?"

"Fairies? I saw mechanical clowns. Jeez, your memory is really slipping, hun."

Another thought comes to me, and I verbalize it. "Time distortion is among the perceptual hallucinations."

Nakomi looks more worried. "Come again?"

"I just...I remember that during that trip, at one point, I wondered if it would never end. If I would be stuck in there forever. Do you think...do you think some people never come out? Or that they think they come out but they really don't?"

"Time distortion is a real phenomenon during those experiences, for sure. Tachypsychia is the official name. Time can expand or contract. Minutes can feel like years, or an hour can seem like just a few seconds. But time goes on in the real world, you know, and eventually, everyone comes out of their trip. It's the lingering psychological effects we have to worry about. I'm glad you don't have any. Right?"

"Right," I tell her.

She doesn't look like she believes me.

That night, in a champagne-meal stupor, I dream of lizard people. Not humanoid grasshoppers; humanoid crocodile-lizard things. When I awake, I wonder: how long did my Vivectica™ trip last? The answer, of course, is less than an hour. But how much happened in an hour? How much could happen in an hour?

Unable to fall back asleep, I go on a psychedelic drug forum. I haven't been on one of these since my Vivectica™ experience, when my bad trip featuring human-eating grasshoppers sent me into a headspin.

Browsing the subjects, I see individual forums on entity contact, ego death, and ... second lives. I click on "Second Lives," but before I read any of the related threads, I use another webpage to Google "Second Lives." I find a variety of answers, but there is one clear answer related to drug use: "Second Life is an experience related specifically to the use of Vivectica™. Users who claim this experience claim to have had trips that felt like they lasted from days to even years, during which they re-experienced a part of their life and returned from the trip thinking certain features of that experience were real despite the fact that the experience was a hallucination."

Huh, I think.