Denorthe

She had abjured this life. She had sworn it by the zeroes and ones that formed her digital existence, by the lifecode of her own child! But the more she strove for the normalcy that had been stolen, the more meretricious her old life seemed. Ah, to rarefy the weight of the demands upon her, to make less heavy the troubles of this double life. Repine all you want for the peace of the past, it is forever altered.

She is inured now, and the sadness that once troubled her every time she snuck away no longer troubles her glitched heartcode. In her recondite way she loves him still, but he is torn from her, and the stygian depths of her digital soul she wishes him peace. He is prone to volubility now, trying to fill her long silences, willing to go farther and farther where she once met him halfway. Childhood friends, then teenage lovers, two birds of a pair, two halves of a heart necklace. As she retreats, he advances, trying to pull her back, trying to form a whole heart still. No matter. The extirpation of their love is nearing completion, and when he realizes that the heart is his alone now, she will send him her blessings of peace, and let him live without the weight of knowing that someone is always Watching.

The boy is sleeping now. The younger love-child, a butterfly trying to escape the vacuum of her absence. How can he understand that his mother has flown away on green wings in a beam of light? Code irrevocably scrambled, memories lost in transfer. It took her so long to find them, fill in the blanks left by the abnormal tearing, not a deletion that leaves you with no memory of there ever having been anything but broken ends trying to meet in a middle that no longer exists. Every iteration took her farther away, until one of them brought her back. Ellipsis, and it is now simply a story for her boy, who will not understand when she leaves him.

It felt so far away, like a dream of something that happened to someone else. She was willing to forget, but they never forget anything, though the limits of code may deny. They called her up again, turned on the hortatory. She was opprobrious. Could they not rule themselves? Recumbent on the lounge, she considered: could she not give them a little, after all they gave her for her efforts to find her family? The culpability is hers, for abusing their trust, even if it all comes to naught in the end. They break off their encomium, they cease to inveigle. An almost minatory silence descends on the small, white digital simulation of a room, and she knows what she must do.

In the ones and zeroes of her jewelry box is code representing a gold chain with green jewels. The accretion of dust has left them dull, but a quick polish brings back their glow. She told her daughter they were a gift from a friend, but the churlishness of her reply gave her away. Like mother, like daughter; the girl is not so young, teenaged now, and very clever. She alone has the discernment to tell what her mother is doing, where she goes when she leaves dinner early. She alone has seen the light, the green light which rises into the painted sky and takes her mother with it. She too cannot rest anymore with her simulated feet in the digital ground, and will forever yearn beyond the infinite sky.

An early morning. No fog. She remembers fog, remembers weather, remembers wine and deserts and many things besides, realities so strange in this new world that they are tales. Moonlit falls and mermaid coves are nothing now. Now there are emotions, passionate and new, that feel as real as anything she ever saw in her travels. She prefers feelings, even fake feelings for fake people, to fake places for the fake people to go. But there is one place she must go, a place with no day, and her daughter is beside her this time.

From his window the boy sees her, ready to follow her daughter up the green beam to the glowing world she now belongs in. He reaches for her, she reaches back, and they connect one last time before she is gone. Someday the boy will write a book about her, about his mother who lives beyond the sky and flew away in a green light. But for now there is a simulated woman in a red dress and a simulated daughter in a black skirt, transferring their code away to a simulated world where it is always night and the green crowds are already crying as one:

Alleb Sserpme eht liah lla! Ardnassac Ssecnirp eht liah lla! Neeuq suoicarg eht liah lla! Sreehc eerht!