I Fell From The Dark

25

She walked through an open plan office. She wasn't supposed to be on this floor, but it didn't matter. She'd be out and away soon enough.

He didn't know that she was there. He was laughing with a woman that she didn't recognise. She was holding a laptop, pouting, pretending to be stupid. He reached up and pushed away a strand of hair from her face.

She stopped cold, shocked at the casual display of physical closeness to this stranger.

I remember this. This was the day that I first suspected that he was having an affair. I stared at him, and then I turned around and left. I had an argument with him that night over something stupid, but I couldn't bring myself to accuse him of anything.

These dreams are memories, but they're all jumbled up.

I wonder...

She imagined that she was in the building, on another day, early in Spring.

She stared at her computer. The new model launch was in a month, and she had so much copy to write, the motor show was messing them about, why was it always so hard...

He was next to her desk, hovering uncertainly, holding a coffee.

This was the day we met, she thought. He'd come to tell me about some feature he'd written in to the software, see if it could be used in the marketing. Because we both worked at that car company: he was a developer, and I was in marketing. We went and got a coffee, and he made me laugh, and I saw him that Friday, at some dumb bar called the Strawberry Mollusc.

I wonder who he was.

Pilgrim said that when we sleep in the ship we play a game. That we experience lifetimes in a simulation. She lied about a lot, but I wonder if that was actually true.

I sat at the fire with Jean, and it was as real as this. More real, actually. And there was no goggles. It was like I was plugged directly into it.

She looked up at the faceless man, the dream rushing like a torrent which couldn't be stopped. She smiled. She asked him who he was and then...