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It would be hard to say at exactly what point I noticed Tate was running me in circles. She was good at messing with people, so at first I pretended I didn't notice how when we spoke on the phone, her laptop was always on.
"Are you going out?" I asked her over Zoom.
"Nowhere to go, everything is closed," my best friend replied with a yawn. "Duh!"
"It's just, you seem distracted," I said.
"I'm so tired of talking with nothing to say."
Her words hurt my feelings, but I hid my resentment. After all, she was right. With both of us on lockdown, neither of us had any news.
"I'm learning to knit," I said. "Are you doing anything?"
"I'm playing the isolation game," she replied.
It was the first time I heard of it. I thought it was a joke, until I saw the way she eyed her laptop, like she couldn't wait to get back to it.
"Do you know who I am?" a voice asked behind her. "I know who you are. Your name is Human. You started out as a monkey and you've been evolving for six million years. Trust me, I know all the facts, I know all the figures."
"Who's that?" I asked.
She ignored the question.
As the weeks passed, we continued to call each other. Well, mostly I called her. It always felt like she wanted to be somewhere else, with someone else.
Behind her the voice droned on.
"You messed around with fire and metal for a long time, but I guess it was progress of a sort. You're so puny and pathetic and you waste so much time. You made weapons out of bits of stone and threw them at small animals. You dug pits for larger ones and, as you got clever, you lined them with stakes. You used hides for clothing and bedding and cooked the meat over the fire you took centuries to learn how to make. You hid from lions and lived in tribes because you needed the protection of the group."
"Tate!" I asked. "Is that a friend of yours?"
"Huh?" She took her eyes off her laptop and glanced at her phone to answer me. "No, it's a game."
Her attention drifted back to the computer.
"You cleared forests and started to farm. You built villages for shelter and defence. Then you learned to write and became civilised with art and architecture, plays, music poetry and running water. You used your superior abilities to conquer weaker countries and plunder their resources, take them as slaves. You captured lions and fed them with prisoners. And you think I am evil."
"That game sounds super-weird," I said, shaking my head.
"Then you found religion and, in the name of divine salvation, you plundered more countries and waged more wars. You burned those who disagreed with you and walled up books in libraries where few could read them. Knowledge was too dangerous to be shared. People might start to question the authority of God. After two thousand years of God, you discovered me."
"No." Tate shrugged. "It's good." But even though she shut down the screen and turned her attention to me, talking to her hurt. I tried to pretend everything was fine, but deep down, I knew we were playing a part.
She was my best friend and we hadn't seen each other since March. There was something she wasn't telling me, something that wasn't right.
Still, three months of lockdown had changed us all. At least that's what I told myself.
The day before confinement ended, she was quiet.
I asked her what was wrong.
"I'm scared, Belle," she said. "Think I'm losing the isolation game."
"Lockdown is almost over, Tate. We'll see each other tomorrow."
But she just looked at me and said, "Goodbye, Belle!"
The finality in her tone scared me. That night I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned and kept checking my phone.
Finally, just before dawn, the message came in.
A video.
"Play with me, Belle. Play the Isolation Game." She stared into my eyes and I couldn't tell if the passion that burned there was love or hate.
Friends don't look at friends that way, but I could never refuse Tate anything.
I hit "Play".
"Do you know who I am?" her voice asked me.
"I know who you are." We both spoke as one.
"In 1972, I started out as a stick. The game was so simple, you could program it yourself on Scratch. I moved up and down the screen and balls bounced off me. My name was Pong. But I evolved quickly. By 1980, I'd become a disc with a mouth and I could travel all over the screen and eat up everything on it. My name was Pacman.
"In 1996, I became a woman in tight shorts with tangled hair. I could negotiate crypts and tunnels with firearms blazing in both hands. I was the Tomb Raider.
"Now I can build whole worlds and tear them apart. Perhaps I'm God!"
It wasn't Tate and it wasn't God. My brain knew that.
It was a machine, a powerful AI.
But it looked like her and sounded like her, and emotionally I couldn't help responding to her.
I loved her too much. I couldn't let her go.
She got me addicted and now I'm losing the Isolation Game.
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Author's Note
This was my entry for the "See" You Soon! Songfiction Challenge, hosted by WattpadShortStory and BACommunity (September 2020)
Prompt:
Using one of the songs on the list as inspiration, write about how you plan on reuniting with a friend you haven't seen in a long time.
Length: 1000 words max.
Song I chose:'That Way' by Tate McRae
If you know the song, you might have noticed how references to the lyrics are incorporated into the story. Of course, that's not what the song is about, but I love the dark ambiguity of the lyrics...
Audio coming soon!
Once again, thanks so much for checking out my work. If you enjoyed this collection of short stories, but would like something longer, Kit & Tully might appeal to you, especially if you're into music and obscure Celtic gods 👻
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