Core Drive: A Westworld Story

Reverie 2015-L: Logan

Joy, not the woman sleeping beside him, wearing his shirt and smelling of vanilla and sandalwood, but that unbridled sensation of happiness that made his heart feel two sizes too big for his chest, wasn't something he experienced easily.

There were moments, soft, turned idyllic in his memory, where he had been happy. Like the summer at the beach house where Logan and Juliet had searched for seashells while their mother, Eloisa, read a book on the sand. And then there were moments where that happiness seemed to always be destined to blow out, the way a candle does at the end of its wick. Like the morning after combing the beach, when James Delos returned from the city, bringing vitriol and disappointment with him, shrinking Eloisa into something smaller, tired.

Though faded, there was one memory that clung to him stronger than the rest. 

He had been rounder then, a gap where a tooth took its time to grow out. His mother had gone for a drive. First, out of the countryside, then, onto a highway, far from anything he found familiar. She had parked the car in a random spot, knuckles going white on the steering wheel, the radio playing an old song. Excitedly, he'd pointed to the entrance of an aquarium across the street, and his mother smiled as if it was part of her plan from the get-go. The cartoon fish on the signage post jumped in animation by the entrance. At the gate, a 3D projection of a clownfish had passed right through him, and he could have sworn it was magic.

He remembered the strange, ethereal blue of the aquarium where jellyfish undulated into oblong shapes and then mushroomed back to normal, bioluminescent jellies. Their tendrils moved like sea snakes against the water. 

He remembered his mother pointing up at them, whispering their name like a spell, comb jellies, and then reaching out to lay her palm on the glass.

"I read somewhere that jellyfish are immortal. Or...maybe it was something to do with possible immortality," she had said, sadly. Logan had asked her what the word meant: immortal. She had laughed, saying it meant to live forever.

"Is that a bad thing?" he'd asked, unable to understand why immortality was something to be sad about.

"They must get lonely out there, in the big, blue ocean. Every day the same as before," she said, her body drifting with the artificial current generated in the tank, dancing with the comb jellies. "Watching everything change but you."

"If they live forever, they must have many friends. You can't be lonely if you have friends," he had said, tracing the meandering lines made by a glowing tendril.

"You think so?" she asked. It wasn't the kind of question that could be answered, not by a child, not by anyone but herself. Still, Logan had nodded, so sure of his answer. She had stared at the comb jellies, almost in a trance, and he had held her hand, making a game of counting the glowing stripes on the body of one of the jellyfish.

At that moment, amazed by the beauty of strange creatures, speaking of the possibility of forever, he had been happy. Over time, Logan came to realise that memory was a sad one, evidence that his mother had been unhappy with her life, drifting from moment to moment with only the warm hand of a child to keep her anchored.

Joy stirred beside him, reigning in his thoughts. Logan shifted his weight, positioning himself on his side so he could look at her properly in the dim lighting. She made a soft sound in her sleep. Airy, not quite a snore. Her lips were parted ever-so-slightly and he brushed aside the impulse to kiss her there.

"You awake?" Joy peeked up at him, the haze of sleep making her voice a whisper in the night.

He hummed, pushing the strands that escaped her satin headscarf away from her face.