Every Version of Us

Chapter Twenty-Three

"So, The Midnight Garden is created by the player's own thoughts? Their projections, right?" he wonders aloud.

Maggie nods. "Precisely. Our players create the world and the story they want to play in, and it changes with their daily mood. No two experiences are alike," she says.

He holds up a finger. Gotcha. "Except that's not true. I just read a story someone wrote online that's exactly the same as my game experience, to the very second," he tells her.

She frowns, and there's something else that mars her face, an unexpected chink in her ethereal armour. "That's impossible," she argues.

"Take a look," he says, unlocking his phone and sliding it over to her.

Maggie's hair cascades over her face as she quickly and voraciously reads the first chapter. Her lips twitch ever so slightly, and he wonders exactly what is going through her mind. Her posture is so exact, she almost seems robotic. She looks back up at him and plasters on an eerie smile. "This isn't possible," she says, as though that is that.

"But it is possible, because it happened. I just read it myself. It's exactly the same. How could that have happened?" he asks. It's not lost on him that this might cost him the job, but then again, something deeper is happening right now, isn't it? Something he needs to get to the bottom of.

"Well, do you know who wrote the story?" she asks him.

"No idea. Orion. A nameless face on the Internet," he says.

Maggie types on an invisible surface for a moment, and then smiles. "I wouldn't bet on that. Think a little bit harder, Felix, about how this could have happened. There are no coincidences in our world."

There's something almost sinister about the way she says it. Felix nearly grunts in frustration. He's tired of all the dancing around the truth. He just wants answers. "So, what are you saying, two people both somehow created the same experience at the same time without even knowing it?" he asks aloud.

"I don't know how that could be possible, Felix."

Frustration threads through him, and he takes a deep breath to calm himself. The only other person who could have written that story is the person who's in it. It has to be Riley, but wouldn't she have told him? Then again, he hasn't exactly been present the last few months. How could he have missed this? "Clearly, you know something. This has gotta be something to do with Andromeda's tech. Maybe you've infiltrated both our brains and harvested our deepest desires. Maybe you projected that story into her. Into me. But you know, don't you?" he accuses.

Maggie's gaze is cold, almost alien in this moment. "Don't you think it's you who should be figuring all of this out? Putting the pieces together? How could two people have the same fantasy? How could they create the exact same experience apropos of nothing? You're missing something, Felix. Something important. Can't you remember?" Her voice warps slightly, dipping deeper, then reverberating back to normal.

"Remember what?" he pleads, but Maggie just shakes her head. She's not going to give him anything.

Suddenly the room feels constricting, like the cold glass facade has wrapped around him and is squeezing the very life out of him. The air begins to shimmer, and flashes of other lives appear in the room before him.

There's him meeting Riley in the Caddy, just as he's been playing. Then, a luxury loft appears with four people, drinks in hand. Lucy, Henry, and Riley. They cheers, then with a whoosh, the room morphs from wooden beams into brick and metal. He can see himself kissing Riley at the top of the clocktower. It rushes into his mind like a freight train, and he gasps. Riley. He needs to find Riley and tell her something's wrong. That they need to find their way out of this world...