Hi, Satuawany ,

And one more before I go, to make up for a used-up Extra. A new story, too! I’m excited.

I remember reading it for the first time. It was what triggered my suspicion that all stories in the collection are connected, that this isn’t just the same universe and the same tech, but these characters and situations are recombinations of Dave and 152. At first, I was sure the narrator was a real customer, someone who used the therapy tool and is now experiencing the same tech Dave is experiencing (with Dave trapped in it already), but I ended up believing we’re witnessing the echo of that person: 152 is the product of all the minds it has ever encountered, and that person is a part of that tangle just like Dave is. Maybe the session happened exactly like it happened, although the narrator couldn’t be a customer yet—she had to be a volunteer, since the tech wasn’t available to the public yet. And maybe it’s what Dave and 152 hope their future will be like when they go live, and real people come to them to resolve their issues.

In that sense, this is as fictional a scenario, as vampires in space had been. Except, both Dave and 152 aren’t completely immersed in it: they are aware of the simulation, they are aware of a body floating in the sensory deprivation chamber, aware of the safe word that can take them out. Everything that happens is wrapped in a believable explanation at first, but the moment the narrator faces her not-husband (and then herself), the veil gets… not lifted yet, no, but skewed. I love the something’s-not-right vibe the story plays with. “You're not waking up.”—oh, eerie! They are stuck. The pause in simulation the story ends with doesn’t mean the narrator wakes up. It feels like a happy ending, but the happy ending is off-page. We can’t be sure it really happened.

But let’s focus on the fictional reality for now. I love that the vice in this one is not addiction but insecurity. The entire issue the narrator has paid to address feels so real. It’s not something big. And there is trueness to that: I can see people turning to experimental tech with exactly that kind of issue, something they themself label as insignificant. And of course everything has deep, deep roots, and that also has trueness. At the heart of all therapy is facing yourself.

The narrator’s situation seems trivial yet not overused. Her husband isn’t unloving or cold towards her, his only fault is being a separate person with independent interests. And she’s insecure and envious and possessive, but at the same time, she doesn’t seem to act on those impulses, they are well under control in her behaviour if not in her thoughts. It’s surprising that she chooses not the happy scenario where the issue is resolved, but the bad scenario, where her supposedly worst fears are confirmed. It’s also interesting that she chooses jealousy to cover her envy. And of course her imagined solution is wrong: facing the hurtful situation wasn’t as healing as she had imagined. I love how 152 goes a step further, moving past her safe boundaries (I love how you play with the imagery of the line, by the way!) and pushing her deeper into her surface fear, past it, towards her real enemy, her self-image, her insecurity, her selfishness, only to realize they are not what define her or her relationships with her husband. They are there, her inner demons, but she doesn’t let them loose where they can hurt others.

And I love how you play with light and hell, with devil’s name that sounds so positive, with sliding from “your own personally conjured hell” to “Hell was having to face oneself”, with going from a tool for healing to a possessive, confused mind.

I’m going to share a few line reactions, too.
It was something about knowing I had chosen it. Why a line?
I love how right from the beginning we have this question of who is in charge—an echo of S’Old. The user’s mind in VR is what supplies the details that make the scene believable, and yet, we don’t know how we do it, how our mind works. We don’t know what our subconscious does. Hundreds of mids have been poured into this tech, so we have hundreds of unknown variables.

A woman's voice screeched through my head
I wonder if the woman is real and her voice is breaking from reality where the lab technicians are trying to wake Dave up.

A jellyfish of wires led away from the fitted helmet
This imagery is something!

I hoped that my husband would like it.
This is completely unrelated, but we’re watching Landman nowadays, and there’s a scene in it, where a wife has a meltdown over people not appreciating her efforts with cooking and decorations, and the MC gives a wonderful speech about how she should be doing things without expectations, just because she herself wants and enjoy them, and that she can’t build a picture in her head and be upset other people who never saw that picture act differently and ruin it. What I’m trying to say is that this is such a recognizable and universal situation.

my mother's favorite bread recipe
This is the second time on the internet that I notice bread mentioned with lasagna. Do people eat lasagna with bread? Like… why? It already has pasta in it. Or is the bread just a starter?

one of the old ones from back before electric vehicles had become mandatory
I love these little hints that this is the future.

We were happy, though. I'd just gotten torn up over him not noticing the dinner because he was so excited about the truck.
This is also so, so recognizable. We have a saying that originates in Polish, which can be roughly translated as “look for earthworms up one’s arse”, meaning to look for problems when all seems fine.

But what made me run wasn't the image so much as the knowledge that I'd made this image.
It seems that there’s already so much self-awareness in her, but she’s unreasonably harsh on herself. She just needs another step deeper, to see that it’s not as black and white as she thinks, she needs to feel those feelings and let go, and forgive herself for them.

I put the toe of my shoe over the line, watching the partial eclipse but not really seeing it.
I love how the interaction with the line coincides with her epiphanies.
The darkness around me was even deeper after I'd stared at the glow of the line. I was done here.
I wonder why the darkness gets deeper the closer she comes to resolution. Does it mean the solution is wrong, that this is another layer of self-deception, that the real issue is not yet addressed? Or that the standard therapy session is over, and the off-script part begins?

The anchor was supposed to be the place where none of the fantasies could follow.
I was a bit confused about what “the anchor” is, exactly? The entire dark space with the line?

“They sent me in to get you,” he said, reaching for me but not quite touching. “You're not waking up.”
I’m choosing to see it as something that comes straight from the real-reality, where Dave’s colleagues are frantically trying to wake Dave up, sending insisting commands to 152. But it can also be a recurring problem, where every user glitches and is stuck for at least long enough for 152 to probe their mind and take what it needs.

No one could join me
Yeah, about that. That “There was a click and I was alone in there” was a lie. You’re not alone, darling. And god knows how long you’ve been there.

It was impossible that they'd had time to contact my husband and bring him in on top of my time having run out.
That’s exactly the thought I’d be having in that situation.

Even if he were speaking to me like the technician had, his voice would be tinny, but he was right here.
I love this detail. Of course 152 would be “right here”, she’s “right in it”.

“They can't hear you. They don't want to hear you. No one ever wanted to hear you.”
I love that this is partially true, that the lab techs can’t hear her, and partially a push deeper into her true insecurities, that she doesn’t matter.

Everything would be fine. I just had to wait it out.
Wait it out, just like the vampire and his daughter have to wait it out until she’s grown and they can both go dormant to wait it out some more.

I mean, you're just so needy.
She is, isn’t she? It doesn’t matter that the real husband wouldn’t ever tell her that. She has to hear herself, see herself from the outside, realize how harsh she is on herself, and give herself permission to feel those feelings. A dose of neediness is always present in relationships. It’s what you do with it that matters.

“But this wasn't me”
It’s so symbolic. “That isn’t her” as in “she is not defined by her dark thoughts”.

This was where I could tell him.
This entire VR space where you could do what you’d never do—you shouldn’t do—in the real world.

I'd come to peace with myself, and that was what I'd paid for.
A happy customer, a successful therapy session that allowed the patient to face her issues and make healthy conclusions—something worth keeping.

As I said, I do not believe what comes next is her waking up in the sensory deprivation chamber. Well, maybe the real person did, some time ago, but the mind 152 kept, the bit that was copied, is left in the simulation forever. And at this point, I bet this is a recombination of the simulations, the new thing stitched from hundreds of samples, just like machine learning does in training. Stolen content, cut into small bits, reshuffled and put together a million times to become something new. Isn't that how we humans create, too?

Anyway, I’m excited about more and more of Dave’s and 152 reality seeping into the stories, and I’m especially excited about the story that’ll come next. But the review will have to wait.

Cheers,
J.B.

P.S. It breaks my heart that in all my shuffling, I couldn’t prioritize finding a story for this year’s Lodestar. I tried, I swear, but nothing came.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .