How high to touch the light?

  Time is the enemy of memory. Time is the lover of memory. Mixing with it, dissolving it, blending it into something else. Uanding. Luke’s memories, sold to Dr. X, sliced and diced by the extractor, were less than what they became, in time. In his mind, in his Spirit, the memories dissolved, were digested, processed, and became uanding. The knowledge of those other hims, of what they shared, and what they cked. And the uanding of the nature of Bliss, of desire, and even, finally, the ao the first questions asked of him iherworld, “If you could do anything, …”

  The answer, in time, had bee clear. He would be a Hardworlder.

  But the memories sold to Dr. X had been unstuck from time. Stripped of their text, and in that se was Dr.X and all the future buyers of the mem whetting ripped off. He hoped, faintly, as weakly as he could bring himself to hope for such a thing in this pce, that the value of the story would hold, that some Bliss addict would see the tale or some recycled fragment of it and e to one of his hard-earned realizations, but with less struggle. And maybe one of them would find her. Maybe someone would stop her.

  He k was a long shot, khey would chop it up, edit it, use it to make themselves look better, draw more moths to the fme, but he k had to be them. Memory rots, as they said oreet, and food or bad, Dr.X was the only one who had the raw, undissolved mem of each day in the real and the freshest scrapes of the rest of it. It had to be him. It was right, or if nht at least poetic, that it was him.

  Iime that had passed since he gave up the story, he had given up hope that it could tihat maybe some epilogue or happy ending was still waiting somewhere ahead of him. He had never seen her again. Not even a brief glimpse in the Allclub. None of their on acquaintances had seen or heard from her, and he had stopped asking. The world of bliss dens and dead resorts and dive bars that had enpassed their brief life together, and around which he had hovered like a moth waiting to be let ba, fell away from him ohe habit was kicked, and now only floated out somewhere in the bck, a fotten dream, a dead wreck, and every sed of his new bright life took him further from it forever.

  “I give you fifteen. Make them t,” Kra said.

  After the drop into darkness, after the rushing white noise roar had surrounded him, he saw the light, and in this excited move of finality, saw the irony in it. A dim streetlight floating softly in the endless bck, about a quarter of a mile away, about as simir to a Blisslight as a cardboard tree in a school py was to a t oak, but the parison was inescapable.

  He nded oripmall sidewalk, its two ends and the building disappearing into shadow in his peripherals, and the sudden gravity took him by surprise. He really in his head.

  For the first time in ages, he looked around ihe store. Addicts. Not just bliss but lovebugs too, desperate to take their phantom lovers on more vivid vacations or flesh out their false jobs and personalities with purchased mem. Then he saw the back of a mask. A Hardworlder, browsing the shelves, looking for anything to give an edge. A nagging, annoying, cliché thought echoed in his mind for her the first nor st time.

  What if you’ve only repced one addi for another? What are you chasing in the Hardworlds? What light are y to touch there, huh?

  Despite himself, he thought it in her voice. Running from it, trying not to let it sour this glorious final moment before freedom, he jogged to the ter and tapped the bell.

  The world went all frosted gss around him, and Mr. O appeared.

  “Hey, Sleepy. What I do for you?”

  “Same old shit. What’s the remainder?”

  Mr. O told him, and Luke stopped himself from screaming and dang. He had more than enough to cover it. In fact, it was such a small, uaumber, that it was a wonder he had to e in at all. Most merts would let such a small transa go remotely, but not Dr.X. Everything had to be face to face mem transfer. Better to snag you with the bright packaging.

  “I’ll pay it now,” Luke said, like he was buying gum. Mr. O ected their wallets and smiled.

  “Well, I guess that’s it.”

  “Yep.” Luke stood there, awkwardly, feeling, for some reason, that the occasion called for something else. Mr. O must have felt the same way.

  “Sleepy, we’ve known each other a long time,”

  Luke couldn’t help but smile, in a “yeah right motherfucker, you don’t know me” way, but the smile soon faded as he thought about it some more. The guy had probably seen every memory Luke had for the st four years and then some. From Mr. O’s point of view, he might feel like he’d known Luke forever.

  “And as this is the st time you’ll have any reason to step in here, I just wao say good lud God bless. I always figured you would join up with a det outfit.”

  The visage ged, and the kindly old gas station cashier dissolved, and a mid-thirties guy in pajama pants and One Piece t-shirt held out his hand.

  “It’s been cool knowing you.”

  Luke reached out his hand and shook it, not buying any of it for a single sed. Sure mother fucker, put on another disguise, maybe I’ll think kindly on this pce if I ever hit ro again and look for someoo "help me out."

  “Thanks bro. Have a good one, and don’t work too hard.”

  He turo leave, and Mr. O called out in his new young millennial voice.

  “Oh, Sleepy,” the niame sounded extra awkward ing from him and Luke turned back around and gave the guy a look. He just kept smiling, and pointed a fi Luke.

  “You hear what happeo Rory?”

  The ruck out like lightning, a bde dipped in aced ing from the smug assholes face, tinged with something. She fuck you too?

  “No,” was all Luke could muster.

  “Oh,” the guy recoiled a bit from Luke’s sm anger, and a bolt of guilt went up his gut, despite himself. What if this really was him? What if he aying something off too?

  “Well, she finally got that ticket.”

  Luke just stared at him, letting the ramifications build and rattle in his head.

  “Uh, just thought I’d let you know. So you wouldn’t be looking for her, you know.”

  Luke looked him in the eye, and some rabid part of him screamed that the dude was lying, just trying to keep Luke from finding her, paid off by her even. She was scared he would e find her and drag her into a Hardworld. She knew her day was fug due!

  But, that guttural, childish screaming only firmed what he saw in the guy’s eyes. He was telling the truth. She really was gone.

  “Thanks for the heads up.” He tried to make it sound authentic, to soften some of the previous anger, but his pain slipped out in it, and it sounded like a whine.

  Dr.O, or whoever he was, nodded with sad puppy dog eyes like “oh you poor boy” that made Luke want tle him, and spoke with a gentlehat seemed beyond his age.

  “If it makes you feel better, you’re not the only one who wanted revenge on her. Sorry to be the oo tell you she got away with it.”

  Got away with it, Luke thought, and smiled. Whoever’s running Paradise, they’re probably bigger parasites than she could ever imagine. Right about now, she had probably finally met her match.

  He smiled and reached into his pocket.

  “I don’t know about that.” He held the vial of bliss up to the light. Dr.O watched it like it was C4, but Luke just tinued.

  “They say this stuff es from there. I ’t imagine being ihe mother lode is aer for the human dition.”

  Dr. O looked from the vial to Luke, a his jaw droop in a scowl that said, “bro, are you stupid?”

  “Yeah, well you know it’s the not having it that causes all the issues.”

  Luke’s smile widened. “You sure about that?”

  There was nothing to say to that but goodbye. He let the store rush by him, dropped off the crete outside, and sailed out the chute at the bottom of the void, right into the ing hum of the Allcity.

  Acc to his clock, it had only been a little over five minutes. On his way to the office, he made a pit stop.

  The roof was just as he had left it. Like it had been plucked from some city in the Real, cigarette butts and all, and pced in the middle of the dreamscape like a joke. He stood there, where she had found him, looking over the railing, and took out the vial. He had kept it with him the whole time to prove he had really beaten it. To know for sure that it was over.

  Watg it glitter, a false light refleg a false su himself think about her, really remember her, not with a forced hate but with his natural, reflexive longing. Was she really in Paradise? Could anyone ever evehere? Maybe the scam was just to get them to walk through a door, then lights-out forever, trapped in some box, drip feeding your Real mem to harvesters who sold it to people like Dr.X and Mr. O. Or maybe she had died, in the Real. He had heard that when you die for real, you stop ing to the Otherworld. But, strangely, he had never known ao die, and had never known anyone who could reliably tell him that they knew of aher.

  So, she was out there, in heaven or hell, far away from him, and he would never see her again, just as sure as she would hink of him, and that was that. An ending of the real kind. Not a resolution, just the sudden severance of what had e before.

  He smiled at the vial of bliss, a fall away, down into the dark haze between the floating ptes of the Allcity, trying to believe that when the light vanished, so would his longing, that any pain in any world was ever really gone food.

  “It’s been fifteen minutes,” Kra said, with suspicious acid in her voice.

  “It sure has. I’m almost there.”

  “Almost doesn’t t, baby.”

  “No. It sure don’t.”

  She must have heard something in his thoughts, or looked a little deeper than she should have, because her voice softened.

  “Ok. See you soon.” Then she was gone.

  He looked bae st time at the roof, and promised himself something silent, then kicked off into the sky, being just another spirit, leaving the bare crete behind, like an altar waiting for its sacrament.

  So it still teically all happens in one day, ok? Up , we return to Gunmaze, aer a world of war and Spaceflight. episode, Soura.