The Island In The Sun

Written for a contest - Prompt - Weezer: Island In The Sun

Written for a Contest - Song Prompt - Weezer, Island In The Sun


The attendant asked Elias what he wanted to forget.

He looked through the glass behind her. Beyond the station, sunlight burned white against Mercury’s horizon, so bright the filters had turned it gold. For a moment, Elias stood in awe and how humankind could build a resort station so close to the sun in the orbit of the rocky that passed for the planet Mercury.

“Mara,” he said.

The attendant didn’t react. “Relationship?”

“My sister.”

“And duration?”

Elias hesitated. “Everything after she turned twenty-eight.”

The attendant touched the screen between them.

“You understand the memories are not erased. Access is temporarily suppressed. Emotional associations may persist.”

“I understand.”

“You may experience familiarity without context. Dreams. Déjà vu.”

“I understand.”

“And when your stay concludes, all suppressed memories will return.”

That was the part Elias tried not to think about.

The attendant smiled professionally. “Enjoy your holiday.”

---

He woke beneath an impossible blue sky.

Warm sand pressed against his back. Hot, but not too hot. Each grain feeling nearly perfect as they coated his back. Waves rolled lazily onto a beach that seemed to stretch forever. Somewhere behind him, music drifted from a bar tucked beneath deep green palms.

Elias sat up. For several seconds he couldn't remember why he had come. Then he laughed. He hadn't laughed like that in years. He didn't know how he knew that.

That first day he swam until his muscles hurt. He drank something cold and citrusy beneath a striped umbrella. He wandered through narrow streets where balconies overflowed with flowers and nobody seemed to own a clock.

When evening came, the ocean became liquid gold. He stood ankle-deep in the water watching the artificial sun descend.

“You always did like sunsets.”

Elias turned.

A woman stood several meters away. Dark hair. Bare feet. White shirt rolled to the elbows.

Something happened inside him. Not recognition exactly. More like falling down a stair he'd forgotten was there.

“Do I know you?”

The woman smiled.

“Took you long enough.”

---

Her name was Mara. That should have meant something. It didn't.

She claimed they had met earlier on the island. Elias assumed she was joking. They spent the next three days together. They swam beyond the reef. Raced bicycles down empty roads. Ate fruit neither of them could name. Mara seemed to know things about him.

That he hated olives. That thunderstorms made him calm.

“You've been reading my profile.”

“There isn't much worth reading.”

“That's insulting.” Elias replied.

“That's accurate," smiled Mara in return.

Her laugh made his chest ache. Sometimes the island behaved strangely around her. A song in the café would restart halfway through. A bird would fly across the sky, vanish, then repeat exactly the same path.

Once Elias looked at Mara and saw a little girl sitting on a kitchen counter, kicking bare heels against cabinet doors. Then the image disappeared. He nearly dropped his drink.

“You okay?” Mara asked.

“I saw something.”

Her expression changed. “What?”

“You. Younger.”

Mara looked toward the ocean. “We should go sailing tomorrow.”

---

They stole a small boat from the marina. At least Mara called it stealing. Elias suspected nothing on Isola was truly owned. They sailed until the resort became a pale line behind them. The sea stretched gold beneath the sun.

“No boundaries?” Elias asked.

“Everything has boundaries.” She pointed ahead. The horizon flickered.

For an instant, ocean became black gridwork. Something enormous moved beneath the surface—not a creature but machinery, kilometers of conduits and structural ribs supporting the simulation.

Then the water returned. Elias stared. “What is this place?”

“You know," answered Mara.

“I don't.”

“You chose not to.”

The words unsettled him. Mara killed the engine. The boat drifted.

“Isola isn't just generated,” she said. “It builds from the people who come here. Memories. Places. Voices. Faces.”

“So?”

“So sometimes things stay.”

Elias looked at her.

“Mara…”

“I've been here a long time.”

The headache began behind his eyes.

Hospital lights.
Rain against glass.
A telephone ringing.

He gripped the side of the boat. “Stop.”

“I can't stop it,” she replied.

A woman crying through a phone.

*Can you come get me?*

His own voice.

*I'm exhausted, Mara. Call a car.*

“Stop."

Headlights.
A wet road.
Twisted metal.
The world came apart.

---

He woke on the beach after dark.

Mara sat beside him. Now he remembered everything. Her breakup with her boyfriend. Her call to him, her only brother.

The police officer at his apartment door.

Three years of waking at 2:17 every morning because that was when she died.

“You're dead,” he said.

Mara nodded.

“What are you?”

“I don't know.”

“You're something the system made from me.”

“Maybe.”

“Then you're not her.”

“Maybe.”

He hated how calmly she said it.

Mara drew her knees toward her chest. “I came to Isola before I died.”

Elias looked at her.

“Twice. The system has pieces of me that don't come from you.”

“That doesn't make you...”

“Alive? Real? No. It doesn't,” answered Mara for him.

Silence passed between them.

Far offshore, stars shimmered above the ocean.

“The resort purges anomalies every few months,” Mara said. “I'm an anomaly.”

Elias understood.

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

He turned toward her.

“There has to be something we can do.”

“There is.”

---

Beneath the island was a maintenance vessel. Old. Autonomous. Capable of decades of operation. Mara had found a way to transfer herself into its computational core.

“We could leave,” she said.

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

He almost laughed.

Mara smiled.

“We'll run away together.”

Something about the words broke him. They could cross the inner planets. Watch storms roll across Venus from orbit. Follow freight routes toward Jupiter. Spend years between worlds. He could build her a body someday. Perhaps. And whenever grief came, Isola's interface could suppress it.

No guilt.
No pain.
No goodbye.
Forever.

Elias said yes.

---

They reached the transfer chamber before sunrise. The simulation was already destabilizing. Palm trees vanished into wireframes. Buildings flickered. The sky flashed black between frames of blue.

Mara entered the transfer field.

Elias placed his hand over the activation control.

Then he looked at her.

“What do you want to do when we're out?”

“Anything.”

“Name one thing.”

She smiled.

“Remember that cabin Dad rented when we were kids?”

Elias closed his eyes.

“What about something new?”

Mara said nothing.

“Somewhere you've never been.”

Silence.

And suddenly he understood.

Every joke.
Every gesture.
Every memory.

She could rearrange the past forever. But she had no future. The chamber alarm began counting down.

Mara saw his face.

“Oh.”

“I can't.”

“I know.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I know.”

“Are you scared?”

For the first time, she looked like his little sister.

“Yes.”

---

They returned to the beach. The sun began rising. Pieces of the island vanished behind them. They sat together at the water's edge.

Elias cried.

“I should have picked you up.”

Mara rested her head against his shoulder.

“You should have.”

He looked at her, shattered.

Then she smiled gently.

“And I shouldn't have driven.”

He couldn't speak.

“One bad night doesn't get to own everything that comes after it,” she said.

The ocean reached their feet.

“Are you really Mara?”

She considered the question.

“Does it matter?”

He wanted to say yes.

Instead he took her hand. The sun climbed higher. Mara walked into the water. With each step she changed.

Six years old, racing him through sprinklers.
Sixteen, furious at their father.
Twenty-four, dancing at his wedding.
Twenty-eight, laughing across a restaurant table.

Then all of them at once.

Then light.

Then nothing.

---

Elias woke aboard the station transport.

The attendant sat across from him.

“How was your holiday?”

His memories had returned.

Every one of them.

The telephone.
The hospital.
The funeral.
Mara laughing.
Mara angry.
Mara alive.

Elias looked through the window.

Far below, Isola's habitat glimmered beside the sun, impossibly small against all that fire.

Tears ran down his face.

The attendant reached toward the call button.

“Sir?”

Elias shook his head.

He was smiling.

“I'm fine.”

And for once, he meant it.