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Lou’s Pizzeria was full, the room filled with a boisterous chatter that naturally occurred when friends gathered around pizza. Morgan scanned the room to make sure his tables had everything they needed. While scanning, he noticed a woman sitting alone at a booth. He hadn’t noticed her come in. She sat alone, her back to him, gray hair tied into a neat bun. He approached the booth where she sat. Her focus remained on the notebook in which she scribbled notes with a yellow pencil.
“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long,” he said.
“That’s fine,” she said, her attention not drawn away from her notes. She added, “I’m in no hurry.”
Curious, he glanced over at what she was writing: mathematical formulas that looked strangely familiar.
“Are you ready to order?” he asked.
“No, I’m not hungry at all.”
“Until you’re ready to eat, I’d ask if you could sit at the bar...if you don’t mind.”
If it wasn’t such a busy night, he wouldn’t have said anything, but he couldn’t let her occupy a table when every table was already taken.
“No, no, that’s fine.” She raised her gaze and looked at him with calm and penetrating eyes. “Let me finish this last thought, and I’ll be out of here.”
As Morgan returned toward the kitchen, he paused halfway, considered the woman and her familiar notes. He searched his memory, trying to pinpoint from where he knew her. Unable to figure it out, he returned to her table.
“I’m sorry... Do we know each other?”
“You know the answer to that, Morgan.” She closed her notebook and smiled.
“Mother...” The reply unintentionally slipped out on its own. He didn’t even know her name, but he felt it slowly resurfacing—tickling his tongue. He slid into the booth across from her. “Vi, what are you doing here?”
“You wanted to see me, to talk, didn’t you?”
Morgan examined the restaurant around him, confused.
“Is this real?”
“Real is a very nebulous concept. If I’m here, you should know this already. If you’re wondering if all this is your imagination, then yes, it is. Except me, of course, I’m more than merely imagination. Important changes have taken place in your life, haven’t they?”
The situation of the last few days suddenly returned to him. He must have fallen asleep in the house where he was hiding with his sister, Sky. She had come to warn him, and to, paradoxically, try to kill him. They were hiding from the government and from a man named Henry. Much of the situation remained obscure to him. But what had troubled him most was the knowledge that his sister—he couldn’t deny that it was her despite not remembering her at all—had come from another reality, revealing that his life was nothing other than fabrication. A continuous lie maintained by the Qintellect. That was the last he remembered, watching his sleeping sister while pondering the fragile essence of his own life. A life that didn’t follow laws of nature but rather predetermined rules from algorithms maintained by the limitless processing power of the Qintellect. It mattered little to him that this reality mirrored a reality that existed, perhaps, somewhere. What mattered was that the air was fake, his breath fake, his childhood memories fake, with a fake mother dying of a fake disease.
“Yeah, my life has changed,” he said. “Everything has lost its meaning.”
She considered him, concerned, and said, “It’s unlike you to be so negative.”
“I could accept being fooled by The Virt, knowing that something real was beyond. But with Replika, the meaning of everything has been lost.”
“Oh, you’re mistaken. The important things remain real.” She glanced at the family with a young boy and girl at the booth across from them. The young boy raised his plate for another slice of pizza, standing up in anticipation, eyeing the pizza with gluttonous eyes. The father served him a slice, the long strand of cheese stretching from the serving platter to the plate. The younger girl giggled as she watched the father pull, pull, and pull as he stretched out the endless string of cheese that he twirled around his fork. The mother watched the girl charmed by the moment.
“You remember that family, over there?” she asked.
He did. They came in regularly, the Browns. He remembered watching this very scene; it had charmed him. “The pizza doesn’t exist,” Vi said. “The stretching cheese doesn’t exist, but those things don’t matter, do they? The joy of eating together is real, the girl’s giggles are real. The love of the mother for her daughter is real. It doesn’t matter if they are in The Virt, or in Replika, or only remain in your memory. Their feelings exist, and that’s what matters.”
“No.” Morgan shook his head. “The girl’s giggle was fake, created by the Qintellect, as an interpretation of an emotion.”
“She really thinks the endless cheese that her father is struggling with is funny. Her brain, the real one stored somewhere in another world, physical and material, sends the neurological information to trigger her body’s vocal cords. The Qintellect is the interpreter to turn this into a simulation for others to experience the humor she is living.”
Morgan watched the girl covering her mouth as the father ate the lump of cheese he had wrapped on his fork.
“Do you love someone?”
Morgan considered the question, afraid even that had been an illusion. “Her name is Aviva. I have to find her.”
“The Qintellect can create almost anything, but not meaning. That is the privilege of being human, and we must protect that ability, at all costs.”
“Is that what this is all about?”
Vi examined Morgan with a cold, stern face. “Not only that.” She paused. “This is about a mistake.”
She opened her notebook to write symbols.
“I’m part of the mistake. Isn’t that right? What you did to me was wrong.” Vi ignored Morgan. “That’s why you sent Sky to kill me, because—”
Shouting from clients interrupted him. He glanced around to examine the dining room. The tables were all empty, as if the pizzas and drinks had never been served. The clients shouted at him.
“Where is our food...”
“We’ve been waiting for hours...”
“The owner will hear from us...”
Morgan fell back into his booth, hiding his face in his hands in despair, knowing this was a dream turning into a nightmare. He attempted to block out the complaints and ignore them. He wanted to speak with Vi, ask her his question. There was so much he wanted to clarify, understand what Vi had done to him and to Henry, and what she had meant by saying she wasn’t part of his imagination. Perhaps all this was a lie of his own making, a sort of denial. He could not trust anything anymore.
When he opened his eyes, the clients surrounded his booth like an angry mob. Vi was no longer sitting across from him.
