Lavanya Lakshminarayan
1. I am the sole creator of this work. AI is an auxiliary tool.
2. This work is an original product of my skill and resources. AI is constrained to a secondary, assistive role as detailed in Article 4(a) through to Article 17(i).
3. I take full responsibility for the work produced.
—The Tenets, Manifesto of the International Regulatory Authority on AI
The antiseptic, air-conditioned corridors of the New Luru Central Hospital fold around Safia like a cold mist. The overhead lights—not a hint of glare—cast perfectly even shadows on the carpet. Not a reflective surface in sight, wrapping her in a fog of warm white as hushed as the snatches of conversation that follow her around. She feels like a creature of the dark, guided by many LED moons. She doesn’t need to be here, but she is, and she doesn’t want to think about why. And so, she visits her patients.
The hospital is like being in a VR sim, one of those janky ones like Workplace Ninja Raptor Smackdown, where she sneaks around playing a corporate spy, searching for secrets in unremarkable cubicles and broom cupboards, only to be startled by the occasional velociraptor hiding in spaces so cramped they’d make classic cartoon physics blush. The sim is supposed to be satirical; it’s mostly funny because it keeps glitching. And yet, each time she taps on a patient’s door and waits for a response, she expects fangs and claws to come rushing out at her. One hand reaches for the leather satchel at her side, where her sword should be.
She usually finds herself face to face with a haggard-looking mother whose exhaustion is underscored with dark circles, or a sibling with their hair tousled, roused from a state of half wakefulness. Their faces always register a mixture of hope and fear at the sight of her. It must be what doctors experience all the time. Safia wouldn’t know; she’s not a doctor, at least not the conventional kind.
She’s relieved that tonight is a relatively light one. No new terminal illness cases, no severe trauma … other than the one she’d rather not think about, not right now.
Safia stops outside a door on the third floor. A private ward. She raises her left hand and knocks. The door to room 301 swings inward, and she forces a smile. “Hello, I’m here for Mira’s sim therapy session tonight. How is she?”
A man steps back to let her in. His hair is in a topknot, in disarray, and his nose piercing glitters in the dim light. “She’s coughing nonstop. Can’t the nurses give her any more meds?”
“I’m sure they’re following the doctor’s instructions,” Safia says, her tone soothing. “I’m just here to administer her sim-sleep.”
“Right, right,” the man says, fidgeting with a stray lock of hair. He then rubs his hand across the stubble on his chin. “She says this is helping. I really hope so.”
Safia is sure it is. Thousands of patients who have recovered from serious illnesses have said sim therapy kept them in a good headspace. As good a headspace as possible when you’re hooked up to monitors and tubes and oxygen and who knows what else, she supposes.
The woman lying in the hospital bed—Mira—has Luru-strep, a lung infection endemic to the New Luru smog. Her reports indicate she’s recovering. Safia’s job is to keep her comfortable while she does.
“How are you feeling?” Safia asks with a smile.
“Better, except for the cough,” the woman whispers hoarsely.
“Well, don’t worry, I’m here to help with your sleep.”
“Yes, please,” the woman rasps. “I need to know how it ends. Last night, I had the most wonderful dream—”
She’s interrupted by a fit of coughing. Safia pours her a glass of warm water and buzzes for the nurse, who strides in calmly and takes charge. Once the coughing subsides into a wheeze, the nurse turns the patient onto her side and clamps a curved, cushioned sim-pillow to the base of her neck. The mem-foam wraps around her, all the way from the base of her hairline to the tops of her shoulders.
“Comfortable?” the nurse asks.
Mira nods.
“Relax,” Safia says. “This will feel funny for a couple of seconds.”
She drops the leather satchel off her shoulder and flips through her neatly labeled files. She pulls out a smartsheet labeled Mira Jayanth. It’s a slim, translucent piece of code, and she slips it into a receiver at the base of the sim-pillow. The device lights up, and the hairs on the back of Mira’s neck stand on end as a gentle stream of electrical impulses feeds into her nervous system.
Safia steps back from her patient and hovers in the shadows, monitoring the sim on her tab. The sim will play right through her sleep cycle, but Safia only needs to monitor the first five minutes to make sure everything’s working as intended. An array of nodes is spread out on the screen before her, picking up from where Mira left off in the previous night’s episode.
Mira is a Messenger for the Dead. She travels through time and space, delivering the unspoken last words of those who have crossed over to those who survive them. Words they wished they’d spoken, lingering confessions, secret desires. Tonight, she finds herself delivering messages in the Ekarian Forest.
On her hospital bed, Mira coughs. The sim generates a character. The neurons in Mira’s brain fire with recognition.
Mira has never met the young woman before, but she’s heard all about her from her mother, now deceased for five years. She encountered her mother’s sapphire wisp of a spirit in the Mirror Mountains last night, streaming blue soul-stuff in a desperate quest to move on, yet unable escape the mortal realm. Her soul was distraught; she and her daughter had become estranged. She gave Mira her last message, the one that will release her.
Now faced by the young woman she’s been seeking, a river of stars pours forth from Mira’s lips, bubbling up from the light within her chest. She half whispers, half sings her missive.
The young woman throws her arms around Mira, hugging her close and sobbing. Mira looks beyond her to where the mountain peaks shimmer in the morning light. She thinks she sees streams of blue light swirling at the summit of the tallest one, but she peers at it a second too long and it’s gone.
A burden is lifted. Mira’s chest is lighter.
In the hospital bed, Mira’s coughing fit subsides. The sim is designed to distract her from her physical symptoms, to turn her pain into a sense of purpose. Each time she coughs in her sleep, the sim takes over and generates a character, convincing Mira she has a message to deliver. Safia doesn’t quite understand the neuroscience and how it’s implemented; she just designs the quests. When Mira makes a choice in the sim, the nodes light up differently and she travels down a different path in the story. All roads lead to a happy ending.
It’s the kind Safia is desperately looking for. But she isn’t on the sixth floor, yet. There isn’t time to dwell on events there, not yet. Four more patients to check on before she’s permitted to have feelings.
“Sweet dreams, Mira,” she whispers softly, before closing the door behind her.
Safia Adeline D’Souza works in the corridor outside room 609 while pretending room 609 doesn’t exist. It can’t exist because she’s not designing a sim to help the person in the hospital bed within its walls, who can’t possibly be in that hospital bed, but is.
Room 609 is the only reason Safia is in the hospital at all. She can remotely upload her sim therapy modules and monitor their activity from her home office. The nurses are trained on how to administer sims, and the equipment is straightforward to set up. But Safia has been in New Luru Central Hospital every night for the last three months, hoping she’ll finally be summoned to room 609. She stares at the wooden door, feeling very much on the outside of it, and then turns her attention to her console.
She flicks the switch on her VR headset, and the visor slides down over her eyes as a prickle runs up the back and sides of her head. The electrodes embedded in its mem-foam rest against her skin, and a momentarily unpleasant ripple of electricity hums through her spine like static. Her shoulders tense, and she takes three deep breaths to relax them. Her hands steady on the faux leather couch cushions.
“Welcome back, Safia Adeline D’Souza,” Helix, her AI assistant, says brightly, speaking directly into her mind. “Please pick a project to resume work on. Or start a new one from the preapproved list. Or put in an application to create a demo.”
She’s inside the brain of the simulator, ready to create. She can’t create just anything she wants to, though. All her project requests are generated by medical professionals to address specific patient needs. Each one has specific constraints and goals. Safia gets to decide how the sim experience achieves those objectives, but she can only build to order.
She scans the visuals hovering before her eyes. Animated 3D thumbnails show her the Halfway to Hope sim, the Sunbeam Stream sim, and the Planetary Pinball Wizard sim, each at a different state of completion, all due for review at VRFX Studio over the next few weeks.
She knows she could build the perfect sim for the person in room 609, if only they’d let her.
She shuts the thought down. That project does not exist. She focuses her eyes on the Planetary Pinball Wizard and blinks twice to confirm it.
“Let’s create some magic with Planetary Pinball Wizard,” Helix confirms. The AI manifests across her retinas in the form of a humanoid fox, the tips of their ears and tail painted all the shades of a rainbow. “Before we begin, please confirm your acceptance of the Tenets.”
Safia stifles an exhalation. This is a routine protocol governing the implementation of AI across industries. When the first AI programs began to influence the visual and creative arts a few decades prior, the livelihoods of independent human artists came under threat from their terrifying efficiency and their disregard for copyrights. AI-generated content reflected rampant, often dangerous, prejudice and bias, all the way from children’s books to pornography. Far-right extremists had a great run generating propaganda, fake news, and alternate histories, then absolving themselves of responsibility and blaming “the machine” when held accountable—after spending years attempting to convince the world that if the machine said it was true, it must be true. The International Regulatory Authority on AI was formed and, with surprising resourcefulness, created an elaborate compliance policy. Now, before each human-AI collaboration can begin, the Tenets need to be ratified by the human half of the pairing.
Safia pulls on her haptic gloves and brings her hands together to indicate she agrees as each Tenet cycles across her visual feed.
“Thank you for accepting the Tenets, Safia,” Helix says. “Commencing Planetary Pinball Wizard.”
A single black dot appears at the center of Safia’s field of vision, stark against the painted white wall beyond. It expands outwards in a perfect circle of darkness, and a tugging sensation grows to fill the space between Safia’s ribs as she imagines being drawn into it. As she’s pulled closer—as the visual creates the illusion of depth in her perception—the darkness swirls and she’s sucked across an imaginary threshold. It feels like the moment an aircraft lifts off and leaves the runway, the earth falling away.
The mobility immersion is impressive.
“Helix, did you work on the early immersion physics?” she asks.
“I did, based on your notes, Safia. Is it too much?”
“It’s perfect. Well done.”
“Thank you.”
Safia pulls up a dashboard with a flick of her fingers. The sim has dozens of levels that are generated on the fly, based on the difficulty parameters she establishes for Helix as she builds it. When the sim is being played, live data gathered by Helix—based on who’s playing through it, and how their play adapts over time—determines how the levels change, and how challenging they are. Safia wants to test the early sim experience; it’s unlikely that most users being treated with it will need more than fifteen levels if the sim does its job right.
Safia controls a small bubble-shaped spacecraft, flying through space unobstructed, a smooth ride the likes of which she’ll never find in New Luru traffic.
Space is magnificent, pinpricks of stars strewn across its dark canvas.
Out of nowhere, a neon orange planet spins into focus on her left. She tries to guide the craft away from its gravitational field, highlighted as a bright blue halo around the sphere. She fires maximum thrust with a thought, wills the planet to let her go, nearly makes it …
She collides with the gravitational field, and it sends her spinning off into the darkness. It nearly makes her throw up.
“Helix, turn down the realism on the pinball physics?” she chokes out.
“Noted.”
She bounces into another planet. It sends her careening away.
“Much better; let’s stick to this level.”
Her spaceship is now pinging off every moon-shaped orb, streaking comet, and freewheeling meteorite in sight. She’s firing her engines at maximum thrust, dropping her power rapidly, trying to coax the craft out of freefall, pleading with it to right itself, but nothing works. She careens her way across a flight path fraught with inescapable vast obstacles.
She’s running out of fuel, her craft’s taking damage—and then an entirely out-of-place, highly exaggerated eight-bit daisy with a big smile appears. She bounces off its soft, cushioned center. Her craft slows, and she attempts to right it, but now she’s in a field of daisies in space, skipping off their petals and swooping through their leaves. She laughs. And then slams straight into an asteroid. It’s terrifying chaos all over again.
Safia throws her hands in the air. She’s fed up. She relinquishes control of her spaceship. It slows. She sits back and watches. It slams into a satellite, but her flight path doesn’t go haywire. Off in the distance, a glowing golden portal is her destination.
It’s smooth sailing. She bounces off a grotesquely fluffy eight-bit teddy bear, rides out a bumpy gamma radiation field, and does nothing but wait.
She speeds towards the portal and through it.
Level Two.
“Pause. Notes review,” she commands.
Helix has been scanning her thoughts through the experience, and they generate a list of next steps.
“Great job with your dynamic response to my controls,” Safia comments. “That’s the most important thing here.”
The sim is meant to help an unnamed patient deal with their anxiety. Their psychiatrist says their issues stem from a need to be in control of every kind of situation in their life. The intent is to let them experience how letting go is sometimes the best thing to do—the more they fight for control of the spaceship, the more obstacles block their path and send them into chaos. The hope is that through experiencing both the terrifying and the absurd, the patient will realize that it’s sometimes best to sit back and watch, instead of reacting.
Safia and Helix test the first fifteen levels together. She tweaks the art—those daisies really do smile a little too intensely; Helix tweaks the physics. Together they develop new limits for each of the sim’s parameters. She sets to building an entire set of obstacles from childhood nursery objects, to go with the eight-bit space teddy.
Only the really rich or the really desperate can access what Safia does, and she hates that about herself and the company she works for. But she can’t afford for it to be otherwise. Maybe someday she’ll save enough to go pro bono freelance, but the tech she needs will have to be way more affordable, and then there’s the whole bit about connections with medically certified doctors as a client base, a license to practice, and a wretched race for survival against big companies like VRFX Studio. If she pools all her savings together and borrows money off everyone she knows, she probably still won’t be able to pay even one of the expected bribes at all the New Luru government offices. It’s all over the Group Therapy for Sim Therapists chatroom; even the rich kids can’t take it anymore. And so, it’s giant corporation employee or bust.
As long as that’s the case, she can’t independently build the sim she so desperately wants to for the person in room 609 until she has consent from the family. At least, not legally.
Safia checks the time on her display. It’s nearly 8 a.m.
“Helix, let’s hit pause for this session?”
She slips off her VR helmet, pulls on a hoodie, and stares at the door to room 609. She wonders if today is the day she goes up against them, again. She almost gets off the couch and almost knocks on the door, but finds herself frozen in place, as if glued to the seat cushions, her hands balled into fists at her sides.
She leaves the hospital before Amulya’s family can arrive.
Amulya wasn’t supposed to be at Freedom Park that afternoon.
They’d decided it was too dangerous to protest in the streets, after the Free Speech March down Sankey Road last year. Safia and Amulya had been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic at Silk Board, cursing their luck all the way on the other side of the city as night came on and the protest wound up. As it turned out, they’d never been luckier.
Dronecams had recorded the faces of everyone present, identifying them from their smart-tech and releasing their data to the Narangi Brigade. The police made facetious arrests and the far-right group orchestrated all-round intimidation, and while none of the charges could really hold up in court, a spate of harassment crimes broke out in the months that followed. Acid attacks, muggings after dark, break-ins where protestors returned home and found their furniture wrecked, with threats scrawled across their walls. None of the perpetrators were ever found, though every indicator pointed at right-wing goons for hire. Citizens began running their own investigations; evidence continued to mysteriously disappear.
They sat out every protest and demonstration since, feeling progressively more guilty, while violence against protestors escalated. They fought over it nonstop, too—Amulya pushing Safia to “grow a spine,” Safia pleading with Amulya to consider their safety first.
“Things will change,” Safia said. “These clowns can’t stay in power forever.”
“Oh yeah, and who’s going to change things if we’re all hiding in our flats in fear?” Amulya shot back. Her thick eyebrows drew together in a scowl beneath her heavy bangs, and her entire body shook with anger.
“Let’s just wait for things to get a little bit better,” Safia said, reaching for her hand.
Amulya shook her off. “Let’s wait until there’s nothing left,” she said, turning around and stomping off, slamming the door to their bedroom shut.
Safia got used to sleeping on the couch.
It’s where she is right now. She’s turned it into a bit of a pillow fort. All the cushions Amulya made fun of her for stockpiling surround her. Blankets of varying thicknesses for different weather conditions. On the recliner, a mountainous heap of clothes. She can’t stand being in their bedroom.
It was even worse right after the Incident. Each time she needed a shower, she’d have to dash in, grab whatever lay on top of the pile in her cupboard, and run straight back out. Her vision would go blurry: Was it tears, or the blessed pixelation of denial? She’ll never know, except that her brain kicked in and told her it was dangerous to look around, to see Amulya’s side of the bed still neatly made, her half-finished copy of the Fullmetal Alchemist omnibus topping a stack of books, the only thing missing her spectacles, and of course they were missing because they’d been on her face. Safia tries to resist the surge of memory, but the day of the Incident returns to her, unbidden like it always is.
Running late at work. Review with the big boss, Amulya texted.
Ugh, sorry. Hope it goes well, Safia replied.
Thanks. He’ll probably be staring too hard at my chest to pay attention to my presentation lol
UGH. I’ll get you ice cream for dinner
Worth it, mwah!
A string of heart and kissy-face emojis popped up all over their text conversation, and Safia had felt immense relief that they weren’t going to be fighting that evening. Maybe they’d play through a sim together, hopefully cuddle and fall asleep in the same bed.
The ice cream froze rock solid in their malfunctioning freezer by the time the phone call came in. Safia doesn’t remember the words that were spoken, only that the ground was pulled out from beneath her feet even as she raced across it to flag the first EV-cab to New Luru Central Hospital, before remembering she had to book one on her smartphone, before cursing herself for being twenty-nine years old and not having a driver’s license yet, and swearing out loud at how expensive her sim therapist education and equipment had been so they’d never been able to afford a car, because even though she was highly paid she was buried in foreign university student debt, and oh fuck, how were they going to afford hospital bills when her workplace medical insurance didn’t cover Amulya because they weren’t married?—all while three cab drivers canceled on her. She considered walking before realizing she was dizzy, considered calling her sister Sonia so she could drive her there, remembered Sonia now lived in LA, and fuck, when the EV-cab finally arrived she rolled into the backseat, her hands shaking, hoping her wallet and keys were in the bag she’d grabbed on her way out.
Amulya had lied to her. She wasn’t supposed to be in Freedom Park. She was supposed to be at a review with her skeezy boss, that fucking right-wing apologist uncle who’d nearly dropped his expensive glass of whiskey when Amulya had introduced Safia as her partner at that work party two years ago. His lecherous eyes had followed them through the pub, no doubt playing some porno-inspired fantasy about lesbians in his head the whole time.
She wasn’t supposed to be at Freedom Park at all, not at the Equal Rights for Equal Love Rally. It was supposed to be a peaceful gathering, protesting against a fascist central government that was considering revoking the recent laws granting queer people the right to be legally married to partners of their choosing, regardless of their gender. And it had been nonviolent, until the Narangi Brigade had shown up and taunted protestors with ugly slurs.
Safia scrolled through her social media timeline. Video footage was all over the Rainbow Underground, a private Discord server that surfaced what a half dozen other government-monitored social media apps would not. Safia played it all as she suffered silently through the worst traffic jam she’d ever been in, including that one at Silk Board last year. Clearly the cops had created detours and diversions to let the authorities “investigate” the incident. She desperately hunted for a glimpse of Amulya in the videos.
And then the first bomb exploded. Then another. And finally, a third.
Shrapnel rained down on the protestors, video footage took a turn for the Blair Witch, screams of panic streamed through Safia’s headphones, and suddenly, she didn’t want to spot Amulya at all.
Government officials were all over the news, claiming it was an act of “gay terrorism,” a sign of what would happen to the country if the “traditional family unit” wasn’t reclaimed. Safia was sick to her stomach. She fought against the nausea and put her phone down, listlessly watching traffic crawl by until she drew up to the hospital gate.
She tumbled out, grabbed her bag, raced across the impossibly long driveway to the emergency ward, stepped inside, and called Amulya’s sister.
“Ground floor, near OT 4,” was all Kavya said before she hung up.
None of the signs made any sense. Safia could read them, she just couldn’t process them. She stopped several nurses, asking for directions. She managed to find her way to a waiting room, and spotted Amulya’s family. Her father’s face was puffy with tears. Her mother paced up and down, counting prayer beads. Her sister …
“Kavya, thank goodness. What’s going on?”
She threw her arms around Kavya and pulled her into a hug.
“Multiple head injuries, internal bleeding, they’re operating, she might not live.”
Safia felt the breath rush out of her, her knees going weak. She lost her balance. Kavya took a step back from her and gave her a gentle shove. She fell to the floor.
Spots floated before her eyes. She looked up and saw that Kavya’s face was a tight mask of contempt, her lips twisted into a thin line. “And it’s all your fault for corrupting her.”
Safia tries to pull the sheets over her head and wonders why she tortures herself with this memory as she falls asleep every single day. She wonders if she even has a choice. She supposes she should make another appointment with her therapist, but she can’t bear the thought of another conversation that ends in dry heaving and an aching chest. There are no tears left to be shed.
She calls her father, then her sister, then her mother. They’re all sympathetic, supportive, concerned for Amulya. None of them has tried to convince her to move on or said insensitive things about youth and plenty of fish in the sea, and for that, she’s grateful.
Her mother offers to fly down to New Luru from Chennai. Safia demurs, says she’ll be fine. Secretly, she just doesn’t want to clean the apartment and have to host anyone, even a concerned parent.
“Maybe next month?” she says. “I’m so busy at work.”
“Why don’t you come here?” her mother asks. “A change of scene will help.”
“Next month,” Safia lies, then hangs up.
She pulls herself off the couch, and shuffles over to her work desk—long unused for its intended purpose, now the final resting place of anything she’s picked up in the last three months. She roots around in the top drawer and finds a Dreamdust pill.
She tucks herself back into the couch, pops the hallucinogen, and dreams the origins of the universe. Amulya is mercifully absent from its architecture.
Karuna is tidying the house. It’s mostly empty, but little odds and ends lie scattered across all its surfaces, waiting to be put away. She finds herself in this house every day. She’s slowly creating an organizational system.
A large crockery cabinet occupies one wall.
The pink porcelain cups go on the top right, the deep green china on the top left. The bottom shelf is for teapots and sugar bowls, all color coded to correspond to their equivalent teacups.
Each day, the house appears less cluttered.
Karuna is ninety-seven years old and terminally ill. She’s bedridden. She lies dreaming in a sim that lets her believe that she’s putting the finishing touches on her life, most of which has been lived as a perfect homemaker and beloved great-grandmother. She’s surrounded by a family who loves her. They’re struggling to let go. Karuna can’t wait to see what happens when her sim-home is completely decluttered. She’s sure there’s a revelation waiting for her on the other side.
Safia slips out the door after monitoring Karuna’s sim for the mandatory five minutes. She hates intruding on their lives; this was far easier to do when she worked remotely. Her footsteps involuntarily take her to room 609. She hovers outside the door tonight, wondering if she should knock on it. The faint smell of incense wafts her way, and she shakes her head in disbelief. She takes her customary spot on the couch and stares at the door.
Her VR headset lies in her satchel, but she’s too angry to use it. They’ve conducted another puja, that’s evident. And that would be fine, if they weren’t so adamant about not using tech to help Amulya recover. The problem, Safia suspects, is that it’s her tech, and that’s the stupidest possible reason to disregard it.
A spike of rage shoots through Safia, and her shoulders ache from its intensity.
When Amulya had been in a coma for twenty-one days, Kavya had made it clear to Safia, in no uncertain terms, that she would only be permitted to visit when she allowed it. Safia wouldn’t speak to their parents. Safia wouldn’t turn up uninvited.
Safia broke all those rules. Kavya was angry and worried, she wasn’t thinking straight, she reasoned.
When Amulya stabilized and the hospital moved her out of the ICU, the first thing Safia did was pitch sim therapy to the family. While it wasn’t a direct attribution, a number of patients had awoken from states of deep unconsciousness after having sim therapy administered to them.
Amulya’s family heard her out in stony silence. Kavya yelled at her afterward. Then they consulted a priest and bribed the hospital. The next day a puja was conducted, in which they cleansed Amulya of her “impurities” by marrying her off to a tree—in this case, a set of banana leaves tied together with some kind of sanctified thread. Safia was invited. She averted her eyes from her partner’s emaciated person—she lay breathing shallow in the hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and machines of a million kinds, her eyes closed as if in deep sleep while mantras and incense filled the air around her. Amulya would have hated this; she was atheist, just like Safia. It made her so sick, she had to excuse herself midway and go throw up in the hospital toilet.
“I know you and Amu had some kind of relationship,” Amulya’s mother frowned, counting prayer beads after the ceremony. “It’s okay to experiment in youth—you know our family, we’re progressive—but after some time, you have to settle down. And this is her punishment because Amu didn’t listen to us, insisted she had to be with you …”
Her mother burst out sobbing. Kavya appeared at her elbow. “Yes, Mama. Remember that nice Telugu boy Amu was dating before?”
“If only she’d married him, like all of us wanted!” her mother wept, as she was ushered away by Kavya, who shot Safia a filthy look.
Safia knew all of them had wanted that. She’d hoped they’d come around. Amulya had come out to them as bisexual, and introduced Safia as her partner when they’d reconnected after university. Safia had been to their family weddings, she’d helped them mourn the loss of their grandmother, she was invited to every festival celebration, her parents had even met them.
Why were they treating her like a criminal? And why were they disregarding Amulya’s choices as an adult, as if Amulya was no longer there?
Amulya awoke three days after the puja. It was a miracle.
Kavya didn’t let Safia visit for another two days. “It’s no thanks to you,” she said on the phone. “Her soul’s been purified of your filth, that’s all.”
“Kavya, you’re fucking kidding,” Safia pleaded. “Listen to what you’re saying!”
“All I know is she was fine, and then she went to a protest to support your kind, and now she’s in a hospital bed with no memory of who we are.”
“She’s lost her memory?” Safia’s heart shattered against her rib cage.
“All the better for you. You can move on, no guilt.”
Safia was at the hospital within the hour. Amulya couldn’t sit up, and she could barely speak. No spark of recognition lit her eyes. A spare pair of glasses was perched on her nose.
“Who?” she asked dimly.
“Safia. A friend,” she said.
“Oh. Hello.”
“Hello.”
Safia wanted to rush to her side and take her in her arms. She was terrified to move; Amulya appeared childlike and ill. She was scared she’d break the fragile girl in front of her, her head shorn and covered in scars from surgery, accentuating how pinched her face was, cheeks hollow where they had once been rounded and full of laughter. Safia was even more afraid that Kavya would physically haul her from the room and never let her visit again.
“We went to school together,” Safia said.
“Oh.”
“We were best friends.”
“Best friends.” Amulya said the words slowly. They were slurred.
“That’s enough for now, Amu dear,” Kavya interjected, stroking her hair fussily. Amulya jerked away, but she was too weak to shrug her overbearing sister off. The very effort seemed to exhaust her.
Safia’s mouth was dry. Amulya hated physical touch unless she initiated it. At least she seemed to remember that on an instinctive level.
“Say goodbye now, Amu.”
“Okay. Bye,” Amulya said compliantly.
“Bye.”
Safia left the room, her heart lighter than it had been in weeks, her mind cracking at the thought of what lay ahead, her palms sweating from the encounter with this stranger she’d once loved more than any other being on this planet. She leaned against a wall.
No, she still loved her more than anything else on earth.
And no, this was a moment to celebrate.
Celebrate it! her mind screamed.
Amulya was awake, and that was a joy to behold, wasn’t it? Sure, she needed extensive rehabilitation to rebuild her strength, some therapy to rejig her vocabulary, some work on her fine motor skills. But she was awake, alive.
Safia allowed herself to smile. She knew she had the solution to rebuild her memory. If only her family would listen.
They did not. Safia was only permitted to visit on alternate days. Then only once every week. She pitched sim therapy every single time, until Uncle’s face grew puffy and red and Aunty started counting prayer beads, chanting while rocking back and forth. Inevitably, Kavya would snap and ask her to leave.
Safia stares dully at the door. The incense still fills the air. It fills her with rage.
Amulya’s parents are her legal guardians; they get to determine her treatment. Safia, despite being her partner for the last four years, has no say in the matter. According to the law, if they were married, these decisions would be hers to make. They hadn’t married yet because Amulya had been waiting for her parents to accept their relationship. Safia’s even bought a ring. It was never the right time before, and now it never will be.
It’s assumed that once the doctors give her the go-ahead, Amulya will move into her parents’ house again. It doesn’t matter that she’s been living with Safia these past two years, building a life with her.
The grim irony is that Amulya was fighting to keep their rights to a future together when she was nearly killed. The nauseating reality is that they’ve all been fighting over her like she’s a piece of property, an object and not a fully formed person with her own hopes and desires. But is she? The ugly truth is that Amulya isn’t in there. Her body doesn’t hold her mind, not the way it once was, and … is that all that makes a person a person?
Safia’s eyes burn; there are no tears. She tinkers with the Space Pinball Wizard sim all night, even though it’s done already, and ready to be reviewed and certified by the medical board before being administered. She knows she’s playing with it for herself. The complete lack of control as she bounces off daisies and teddy bears in space is calming. She needs it.
She’s going to confront Kavya the next morning.
“Your visiting hours are on Saturday. It’s Thursday,” Kavya says coldly.
“Kavya, hear me out,” Safia says softly, standing her ground. “What’s happened has come as a horrible shock to everyone. I understand that it’s been high stress over the last few months, and we’ve all said things we didn’t mean. All I want is for Amulya to get better.”
“Then you’ll leave her alone. She doesn’t need the likes of your lot around.”
“What exactly is my lot, Kavya?” Safia crosses her arms over her chest and leans against the doorframe, trying not to be loud and wake Amulya, who snores gently in her bed.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Tell me again, just so we’re on the same page.”
“Degenerates,” Kavya hisses.
“We used to be friends, remember? You were the first person to welcome me to the family.”
“A big mistake.”
“Why? Because I’m from the not-posh side of town? I don’t have a car or a license? Not a conventional doctor-lawyer–software engineer job? My ear piercings?” Safia pulls her bangs back to reveal her accessories, all the way up her ear. “Or is it my last name?”
“Sure, that’s part of it, too.” Kavya’s cheeks burn red.
“Didn’t feel the same way when you were getting smashed at our Christmas parties, singing along to carols over the years,” Safia says.
“That was then.”
“Besides, I’m an atheist.”
“Even worse.”
“So were you.”
“Some things make you believe you’re being punished for not believing, that god was watching all along.” Kavya glances over her shoulder.
“Sure.”
“God was watching all the filthy things you did to my sister.”
“Two consenting adults …”
“The two of you lived in corruption.”
“Two consenting adults very much in love with each other.”
“Unnatural, against gods laws.”
Safia exhales slowly. “She loved me. And I loved her with all my heart. If I could, I’d switch places with her, be in that hospital bed instead.”
“It should have been you,” Kavya says.
Safia ignores her. “I’d do anything to have her back the way she was. If you can do pujas and bring in reiki healers and leave crystals all over the room, why won’t you try sim therapy?”
“You mean your mind control lesbian conversion tech?”
Safia starts to laugh. “This is ridiculous.”
“I’ve done my research,” Kavya says angrily. “I know what you do.”
“Look, I’ll even recommend another designer, so you don’t have to see me.” Safia cringes inside.
“No.”
“Please,” Safia begs. “I just want what’s best for Amulya.”
“So do I. And it’s everything that has nothing to do with you. Foreign-educated slut returning with disgusting ideas and turning my sister’s head. Get out.”
“Kavya, we’ve always liked each other—”
“That was then. Out.”
“Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed!” she shouts. “Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
“There’s no need to yell.” Safia raises her hands.
From within the dimness of the room, a soft voice calls, “Hello?”
“See what you’ve done,” Kavya says, her eyes bright with anger. “You’ve woken her up. Get out of my sight, and never come back.”
Safia backs out of the room. The door slams in her face. And in that moment, she knows she’s going to break every rule there is to help Amulya, no matter the cost.
“Helix, how do you feel about going rogue?” Safia asks.
“I’m your AI assistant. I don’t have feelings.”
“That’s great.”
“I must warn you that there are repercussions for breaking the law, though.”
“Sure.”
“Would you like me to populate a list over your visual feed?”
“No thanks.”
“Okay. Would you like to start a new project, or continue a project that’s due, or …”
“How do you feel about redesigning the entire Halfway to Hope sim?”
“It’s on contract, and it’s due in two months. You’re nearly done already, and eligible for a VRFX Studio Speed Superstar Bonus. Are you sure?” Helix is a tiger with bat wings today. The tiger stripes on its forehead knit together in concern.
“Yep, I’m sure. Hang on.” Safia reviews the sim’s architecture. “Can you retain the 3D environment parameters, the quest mechanic, and the progression criteria? Wipe all the specifics.”
“Delete all the personalized data of the patient it’s supposed to treat?” Helix asks. “They’ll know at the studio if they run a random check.”
“It’s only temporary,” Safia half hopes, half lies.
“Awaiting an affirmative command.”
“Yes, please delete,” Safia says.
“Deleted.”
“Thank you. Now could you open the sim?”
“Please ratify the Tenets first.”
Safia brings her palms together as they flash past her visual.
I take full responsibility for the work produced.
She’s in a bare-bones 3D environment intended to replicate a house. The sim is supposed to treat an elderly lady with dementia. She feels sick appropriating it and possibly delaying the lady’s treatment. Safia’s list of crimes mounts. She hopes she can get an extension on the deadline if she needs one and pull this off unnoticed.
“Let’s remodel this house,” Safia says, and pulls out a blueprint with over a hundred photographs.
“This is very different from the brief,” Helix cautions.
“It’s a creativity experiment,” Safia soothes. “I have designer’s block. This will help.”
“Okay.”
Safia tears down the virtual walls with her mind and begins to build her living room apartment. She’s lost in the memory of their third anniversary, exactly a year after they moved into their new home together.
Amulya sat on the couch, her legs crossed at the knee, shaking one ankle uneasily.
“Well?” Safia asked. She’d introduced Amulya to virtual reality for the first time and was desperately hoping her partner had enjoyed flying through portals in space with her.
“I’m not sure …” Amulya said.
“You hated it,” Safia said sadly.
Amulya flipped up the visor on her VR headset. “Hate is a strong word.”
“You strongly disliked it.”
“It—it’s new?” Amulya suggested. “And it all moves so fast! You know me; I like gardening and … comics. Slow things.”
“Right. Slow things.” Safia rolled her eyes. “Will you give it another go, though?”
“Is there a home decorating sim?” Amulya’s eyes shone at the thought.
“I’ll find you one. And if there isn’t, I’ll build you one,” Safia promised.
Amulya tentatively trailed her fingers across Safia’s square chin. “I’ve never wanted to kiss you more.”
Safia placed her hands on either side of Amulya’s face and pressed her lips to hers gently, her tongue tracing lines across her mouth. Amulya shivered. “What are you doing?” she mumbled, as the kiss lengthened but didn’t deepen.
“Giving you slow things,” Safia whispered, tracing her hand up Amulya’s arm lightly. “If you want them …”
“I do.”
Safia adds cushions and indoor plants, recreates their fridge exactly the way it used to be, magnets, photographs, and all. She still hasn’t managed to find a home decorating sim for Amulya, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t keep her promises.
Safia has been on her best behavior. She’s only visited on two Saturdays, and she’s taken to bringing Kavya her favorite flavor of boba tea. It does nothing for their broken relationship; Kavya just sips on it while regarding her coldly.
Amulya’s speech is improving, and she can almost hold her hand of Uno cards—they play board games so she can work on her fine motor skills. Safia never her calls her out for being five seconds late to say “Uno.”
This Saturday, Kavya says she’s feeling a bit dizzy after a few sips of boba.
“Why don’t you lie down for a bit?” Safia suggests helpfully.
“Yes, go to sleep,” Amulya chimes in.
Kavya throws Safia a suspicious look, and Safia meets her gaze calmly.
“Fine, a quick nap.”
Safia waits for fifteen minutes to pass. The sleeping pills she’s spiked the boba with should be kicking in now. She checks her watch. She’s got three hours of uninterrupted time before Amulya’s lunch arrives. The doctor’s been in on her morning round, and the nurses usually leave Amulya alone all morning, after physiotherapy.
“Amulya, do you trust me?” she asks.
Amulya stares at her, eyes wide in her gaunt face.
“You’re my friend,” she says.
“Yes, I’m your best friend,” Safia says.
Amulya nods. “Yes, I trust you.”
“Okay, we’re going to play a different kind of game today.”
“Okay.”
“It’s a secret one, so you can’t tell Kavya.”
Amulya’s lips turn down. “Kavya will be mad.”
“No, she won’t.”
“Promise?”
“Pinky swear.”
“Okay.” Amulya nods. “Let’s play a new game. Uno was getting boring, anyway.”
It’s like talking to a child. Amulya’s brain hemorrhages and skull fracture led to such bad oxygen deprivation that she’s lost a significant portion of her ability to process the world around her. Safia is extremely aware of the power dynamic between them; it makes her feel ill. But sim therapy is her best shot at helping Amulya find herself again, even if a new Amulya emerges, who wants to lead a different life and make new choices. She deserves to know who she is and where she comes from. To not have her life until this moment erased, a blank slate open to manipulation, living in fear of her domineering sister.
Safia rises to her feet. “I’m going to put this hat on you, see?” She produces a VR headset. “It’ll take you to a new place, but only in your head.”
“Like a dream?”
“Do you dream?” Safia is curious.
“I think so. But none of it makes sense.”
“Okay, you tell me if this is like a dream.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll be awake,” Safia says. “And if you get scared, tell me.”
Safia puts the headset on Amulya, then jacks herself in. She’s brought her mini console in her backpack because she doesn’t want to use the hospital equipment, not when what she’s doing is so very illegal. It isn’t as powerful as her pro equipment, but she’s jailbroken it to play sims that don’t come direct from the store. All this could cost Safia her job, her license to practice sim therapy, and all her equipment. It’s a price she’s willing to pay, if this works.
“Whoa,” Amulya gasps as the sim starts up.
“I’m right next to you, so tell me if you’re uncomfortable.”
“No, this is cool!”
“In this dream, just think about whatever you want to do, and you’ll do it,” Safia explains.
“Got it.”
Amulya and Safia step into the Halfway to Hope living room.
“It’s such a pretty house!” Amulya says.
“Why don’t you look around, explore it?”
“Who lives here?”
“We do.”
“We? But I live in the other room with my sister.”
“You used to live here.”
“Oh.”
Safia hangs back and lets Amulya’s avatar explore the space. A tiny, cramped living room with a green couch, a coffee table, a large armchair and a recliner. There’s a wall lined with bookshelves, and potted plants rest along wall shelves.
“There are cushions everywhere,” Amulya giggles.
Safia smiles. It’s the most Amulya thing she’s heard her say since the Incident.
Amulya grabs a cushion and throws it at her. Safia throws it back at her. They grin at each other.
“Wish I could do that in real life,” Amulya says.
“You will, soon.” Safia’s heart cracks a little.
There’s a makeshift bar covered with bottles of cheap alcohol, and two very expensive looking glasses. Amulya wanders into the kitchen. “There are pictures of you and me on the fridge!” she exclaims.
“Which one’s your favorite?” Safia asks.
Amulya wrinkles her nose as she considers them. “This one, on the beach in Pondicherry.”
Safia’s heart nearly skips a beat.
“Wait! I remembered a thing!” Amulya says.
“Do you remember anything else about Pondicherry?” Safia asks, hoping against hope.
Amulya frowns. “Only the name. And the … ocean?”
“Lots of water?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s amazing!”
Safia knows she’s going to rebuild the beach in Pondicherry for next week.
Amulya loses interest in the kitchen—typical, she never could cook—and walks into their bedroom. Safia stifles her trepidation and follows her in.
“Ugh, what a mess,” Amulya groans. She immediately begins to straighten out Safia’s side of the bed, neatly stacking her books and moisturizer. She comes round to the other side, stares at the table beside where she used to sleep, furrows her brow.
“Where are my glasses?” Amulya asks.
Safia’s breath hitches. She’s forgotten that critical, crucial detail. It’s so thoughtless of her, she wants to hit her head against the virtual wall.
“I wear glasses,” Amulya says slowly, softly. “I also wear jackets a lot; that’s why the right side of the cupboard has so many of them …”
She walks to the cupboard and throws it open. She pulls out a red blazer with ruched sleeves. “This one is my favorite.”
Amulya turns and regards her. “You’re my friend, Safia. My best friend.”
For the first time, she says it like she means it, not like it’s something she’s been taught to repeat.
“Yes,” Safia whispers hoarsely. “And you’re mine. My best friend.”
“Cool. Let’s keep going.”