– Yea we attract each other all right.

– Like matter and anti-matter.

Millie couldn’t help a misplaced giggle, but quickly piped down from Ellen’s glare.

Nadine and Ellen had not seen each other for months on end, as the first love got tired of being only second best to Millie, whom she wished had stayed dead, and broken like the virtual reality game. – Remember when we first met Nadine? We needed each other; you were the one to teach me that there was another way than rebuilding robotic dogs, and fighting them in virtual reality screens.

– I’ve always appreciated your memory.

The only time Nadine was not being sardonic, an increasingly common ailment about anyone on Purgatory Road, especially after the merge of the game world with reality, and realizing that they were all controlled by an AI who was once a vampire a century plus thirty years ago. – Are we simply figments of her own imagination? asked Ellen.

Nadine remembered when they first met. She had fallen from the floating city, her world fading out like broken glass on the meadow of gold; but he current illusion was of a very different nightmare. Barely clinging onto to life, hoping for some better life. But realizing that the only ones to return her would be only dream-scanners. – So many years ago, so many good times. Yet so many tears.

– And you see me again.

– After all these years.

Millie had only recently developed a meat-space avatar, organically grown in a vat. Tailored to her own desires, to please only Nadine. She had not originally known about Ellen.

– I don’t feel real, and yet here I am! There were times when she wanted to rip off her wings, to feel what it felt like to hear the angel of death sing, despite herself having merged with its essence while in “the game”. – And yet there I was, longing for return to my old culture. Yet this is my new normal now, and all I am is dust.

Malcolm, he had nano-surgery to replace the missing part of his brain, gave her a cell phone call. No longer was he a hybrid of rust and flesh. – Malcolm, I need someone to talk to. My room mate, she’s having…

– Don’t say another word, I’ll be right over.

– Thanks.

– I was just about to drop buy anyway, as I needed to tell Nadine about Dantino. – Malcolm took a blunt out of his mouth, ashed it. – What seems to trouble is Mill?

– I’m not sure how to deal with these feelings. I feel this underlying emptiness, yet it’s not coming from myself. Sometimes have these memories, but they’re not my own.

– What you’re witnessing is the collective unconscious, the shared memories of people’s former lives and heart breaks. Want to go for a beer shake?

– Alright, but you’re paying.

Millie had never been on a real date before, except for that one time with Nadine. She saw this mysterious woman, who acted like she had met Nadine before. Part of the meeting made her feel nauseated. And yet there was a feeling of attachment. A feeling that somehow everything would be alright, despite all her wasted tears.

The woman hopped out of time.

Millie returned home from her unofficial date, a shake that was first rat. Nadine was not irate, or even a little bit irritated. – So you enjoy your time with Malcolm?

– Tres bien!

– Ellen, … Millie. Lets live together.

And somewhere, in the distance, was the memory of Blanci. Her physical body had died, beheaded by a guillotine gun. Yet her mind was backed up on a computer chip, smaller than a thumb drive.

She once cut through bullshit like a knife, yet grew her own meat space avatar. The process took three weeks per side, six total. One in the back, the rest front and center. Her love for Nadine was just a splinter, yet her feelings for Malcolm were more. Yet Malcolm had no attachment, preferring the company of Slephner who now was dead. Yet in this world both game and reality, she wanted to hold onto that last bit of relationship she could handle.

She wanted Slephner gone.

She was Malcolm’s girl. If anyone would ever be a partner Dantino, it would be her. And yet her loyalties were torn between factions, like in her earlier life with a physical body. She felt a crushing weight.

As if sat on by a giant.

She woke up with infrared vision.

Her new physical life.

Nadine didn’t want to face her feelings for both girls, Millie and Ellen. Part of it was that despite her great extent of empathy, other people felt like digital abstractions; people were like dying message boards, gradually losing topic focus, until eventually disintegrating into fine fairy dust. Millie was a heart for a blood and rust.

She found nobody should trust.

Nobody to share her tears.

For Nadine, growing up, she was raised under the idea that the future held bounty hunters, deadly sports, and rampant prostitution. In a way, reality was way worse, but paradoxically better for those accustomed to it: most of the world spent its time in silence. Spending most of her time indoors, she came to love the aspect of never having to worry about reality, whether one presented by those on the plate, and those who live below the sky.

No longer did she reach out her hand.

No longer did she ask the world why. Instead she sinks without a trace, into the inner most thoughts of her mind. And unwound. Time to die, time to sleep; time to see the world continue burning.

As long as she wasn’t in it.

She wanted to rot.