hannah didn't tell jon about the urn during their slow drift apart. lack of communication was a mistake she had made before, but the distance was growing and it was only jon's naive cuddles that gave her momentary comfort.

how was he able to exorcise his demons? she wondered. he was no longer haunted by the events of april eighteen or the attacks in year 52. he never obsessed over the death of his brother, parents, ex-wife, or aimee.

it seemed like every other mind had forgotten their scars. had the system become t4 for the human brain? repairing lesions left by painful events of past lives? eradicating cancerous memories hell-bent on neurological annihilation? why was hannah's mind the only mind unaffected by the healing power of eternal pleasure?

it was one of those rare days in the somewhere when hannah met herself.

flower in her hair, she did her best to engage. she laughed with friends, listened to gossip, and brushed off accolades from minds who recognized her as their favorite worldbuilder. human interaction was one of the few ways she could experience the beauty of the unexpected as conversation danced with the unpredictable whims of other human minds.

suddenly, hannah noticed a woman who looked exactly like her; a mid-century whore sporting a black dress, ten silver necklaces, and orange braids. hannah checked the profile of her doppelgänger. the woman was human, female, and 18/35. (if her age was correct, she must have been born to mortie parents.)

curious, hannah tapped her on the shoulder. "hey there."

"hi..." the woman began, then she saw hannah's face. "oh," she muttered, then maintained a frozen smile as she scanned hannah's CIN. "you're... her."

human minds usually vanished at the first threat of awkward confrontations, but the woman stood her ground. "it was my boyfriend's idea!" she confessed. "don't get me wrong. you're beautiful. but i wouldn't look like this if i had a choice."

"who's your boyfriend?"

the woman hesitated. "brock foster."

for a split second, hannah's memory conjured the image of a man stoned and naked on her masdar bed. on impulse, she blocked the woman, turning her into a coloring-book outline without a face. "i don't care what you look like," hannah said. "but i'd rather not see it."

the woman responded, but to hannah, the words were garbled and incoherent.

finally, after years of ignoring it, hannah succumbed to the beckoning of the urn.

"what do you want!" she lunged for the vase, but it slid just out of reach. she stepped forward... and it moved again. it was leading her.

off the edge of her spire it fell, so she jumped. arms wide through the open sky—descending through canopies of felt leaves—she reached the forest floor and found herself face-to-face with strawberry vines, the red brick wall, and the pair of wooden doors. the urn was at her side.

crushed daisies served as a sad welcome mat to the lefthand door. in the silence, she heard a distant, creeping hiss.

the urn twirled in the space between hannah and the door. she reached again, and this time, it let her grab it. the base was the same size as the indention in the door, so she pressed the urn into the notch and felt it click in place like a puzzle piece. the jar turned. the door unlocked.

it was a stairwell—the stairwell—with wide steps and even lighting.

hannah keeled to her knees and vomited, then she slammed the door, transported to the middle of nowhere—the blank arena with no life, no witnesses, no judges—and command her body into arousal. she could have climaxed instantly if she wished... but that wasn't as fun. instead, she taught herself to control anticipation, to withhold desire, to distract herself once and for all from the call of the stairs.

decades inside and hannah could be found wallowing in memories of past dreams, materializing upside down with blurry eyes; sketches of her past, present, future, developing one shade at a time like watercolor.

* * *

relationships drift, jon thought. that's ho it happened no. there was no break like there used to be, just the quiet, inevitable drift.

he still loved hannah, and he as certain she still loved him. but he was quickly learning that love was a fleeting, intangible feeling.

sex, however, was real.

long ago, he was practically asexual compared to the testosterone-driven sacks that dominated his construction jobs. but in a world where half the population was devoid of biological impulses (and the other half had forgotten theirs), he felt like a fiend.

although he valued sex higher than most, he could only be aroused if there was a mind behind the body. he needed the chase, needed to woo, needed to overcome the unique challenges only a human female could provide.

to find a date he would strike up a conversation with a unique personality in one of the million social spaces where minds could interact, eat pretend food, sip fake drinks, get drunk because they say so, and talk to one another as if conversation had purpose. after the social pleasantries, jon and his partner would find a quiet garden or castle or cloud. he would replace her features with whatever likeness suited his mood. sometimes she was hannah. sometimes storm. sometimes she had hannah's eyes, lips, and hands, with storm's nose, breasts, and skin. sometimes the women looked like a model, his elementary english teacher, tall, short, round, flat; sometimes sixteen, sometimes sixty-five.

sometimes he wondered if these women altered his appearance. did they give him more muscles? more agility? did they see him as a long-lost love? a movie star from their childhood? an abstract blob comprised of sensual textures and tastes?

did any of them see jon for the person he really was?

it was during a particularly banal affair when he saw the first spider. actually, he felt it before he saw it; a pinch, then a horrible throbbing in the pit of his arm. it was a sensation he hadn't felt in decades... it was pain.

the woman screamed and vanished from beneath him, dropping jon eight inches to the bed below.

his eyes and mouth pursed against his will. he writhed. he grabbed his arm. he searched for the source of the discomfort... and found the spider. it's form was like a black widow with inverted colors; red with black markings. instead of legs, it scuttled on eight jointed needles.

he swatted at the bug but only scared it further down his tattoo. "damnit," he muttered, then swatted again and it disappeared.

* * *

jon stepped into the saturated hype of wrigley field.

the crowd thundered with delight as michael shattered his bat, sent the ball soaring out of the park, and ran his victory lap around the bases. his muscles strained and flexing as he casually propelled himself at inhuman speed. he landed on home base, keeled forward, and grinned in a shower of rose petals.

according to the scoreboard, michael's team won, forty-three to zero. under "mvp" it read, "michael daniel nightly."

mikey noticed his father, pulled himself together, waved, and jogged over. "how'd i do?" he asked, bracing himself on jon's shoulder.

"you kicked ass, buddy."

the cheers faded with the stadium. the make-believe audience and fake team vanished. the men were back in the old chicago apartment.

michael wiped sweat from his brow. "hey ma, look who finally made it to a game."

storm looked up from her cooking (chicken noodle soup, if the smell was any indication). "hey darling," she said, wiping her hands on her apron and clicking across the tile in high heels. "dinner's almost ready."

"where's celeste?" jon asked.

michael shrugged. "i put her away a couple months ago. we still see her on special occasions though. christmas is always nicer with family around."

the men sat on the couch that jon had designed all those years ago. the grey leather squeaked as he shifted to get comfortable.

michael asked about life without hannah, then expounded joyfully on his relationship with cece. jon did his best to listen to his son while brushing off storm's counterfeit interjections. the conversation might have been more graceful if he had a clear reason for being here, but he still wasn't sure why he sought a dialogue.

"look at that tat!" michael exclaimed, inspecting the newest icons on jon's forearm. "you have truly lived a full life."

he didn't respond.

"you wanna hit a few balls before we eat?"

"no."

"i have a dozen experiences i've been wanting to try out. do you wanna—"

"not now." jon dug his thumbnail into the leather.

"your father's bored again," storm said from the kitchen. "he gets this way sometimes, but it'll pass."

"i..." jon started. "i want to talk."

"good!" michael said. "that's what we're doing!"

"tell me about..."

"about?"

jon disengaged with his son's optimistic gaze and looked to the floor.

michael responded with a nervous chuckle, then exclaimed, "hey! i discovered life tripping a while back. have you heard of it?"

disheartened, jon shook his head.

"it's just like any other app, but it's too controversial for the mainframe so you have to get it from a friend. you can set the timer anywhere from two minutes to a thousand years. when you start, you forget everything you know, then wake up in a totally different life. your subconscious selects the initial components like the year and location, then works with the mainframe to create a random but logical world. when the timer ends, you snap back to reality."

"why would anyone do that?"

"cece spent a whole day life tripping, but five minutes was enough for me. i sent you the app if you wanna give it a shot."

"that's great, mikey... but do you ever talk with other minds? do you ever truly connect?"

"of course! i try to connect with all my loved ones."

jon exhaled hard through his nose. "what's your favorite memory?"

michael wasn't fazed by the spastic interrogation. "my favorite memory is when i first saw you inside—"

"no, a memory from when you were young."

michael scrunched his face, then grinned. "i remember when you signed me up for little league when i was six!"

a little boy bolted from the back bedroom in a blue-and-white striped uniform. he leapt over the couch right between jon and michael, then ran to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of water from the fridge. storm watched the child, hand on her heart.

jon smiled. "that was a great day."

"you remember my first game?"

"you hit the first ball they pitched ya."

"and you and ma took me out for dessert to celebrate."

the apartment dissolved into their favorite family-style restaurant. little michael wore his grass stains with pride, kicked his feet beneath his stool, and dove into his very own banana split. jon and storm shared an ice cream sundae.

"tell me something real," jon said. "tell me something true."

michael struggled. "something true?"

"we used to talk. our words used to have value, ya know?"

"well you'll find plenty of value here!"

jon narrowed his eyes. michale's clownish grin... his hyper-optimistic tone... "you did it," he said. "you actually did it..."

"did what?"

he leaned forward and pressed his fingers into his son's cheeks. "how far did you go, mikey? satisfaction? happiness? euphoria?"

michale's smile dipped, but didn't disappear. "i stopped at happiness," he said. "i know you had grave predictions, but i swear i've never felt better in my life."

"it's true, darling," storm called from the kitchen. "he's never felt better!"

the joints between jon's bones ached as if the cartilage was sandpaper. just as he was about to scold his son with another lecture about the danger of pleasure loops, the spider returned.

it was on his shoulder this time, its feet leaving pin pricks along his skin.

"hey, little guy!" michael said, using the tip of his forefinger to pet the spider's slick red abdomen. "ma! check it out!"

storm shuddered. "gross!"

jon wanted to tell his son that his real mom wasn't afraid of anything, much less a stupid spider, but the bug crawled inside his shirt and—after dodging his frantic swats—emerged at the hem of his sleeve. "kill it!" he screamed.

"wait!" michael stopped jon's hand and inspected the creature. "what's it doing?"

the needling subsided, so jon braved a closer look. the spider stood still, but its abdomen was alive, heaving, contracting. "what the hell..."

suddenly, babies emerged, not in eggs or sacks, but fully alive and ready to crawl.

"son of a bitch, get 'em off!" jon swept his hand along his arm but only managed to knock away the mother. unfazed, the babies continued to tickle every inch of skin.

storm rolled a note-screen it into a makeshift club. before she could attack, the babies plunged their fangs into jon's flesh, kicked up their legs, and burrowed.

* * *

the spiders never left. jon could feel them in his muscles, crawling around and vomiting bile into his bloodstream. sometimes they stopped moving. but even when he couldn't feel them, he knew they were there, sucking his life force and making him weak.

he took his son's advice and installed the life tripping app. the moment he opened it, a timer appeared in his hands labeled with archaic words: "years," "months," "days," "hours," and "minutes."

there were two rows beneath the words, one labeled "realtime," the other labeled, "perceived time."

he tapped "minute" and the number 01 appeared blocky and green in both boxes. he tapped it again, then again, then held it down until the numbers reached 30. if his assumption was right, thirty minutes of life tripping would equal thirty minutes in the real world.

a button flashed beside his thumb. above it, the word, "start."

he pushed it.

thirty minutes later, he was back; heart racing and memory restored.

for thirty minutes, jon wasn't jon, but steve, a twenty-year-old cab driver from memphis, tennessee. for thirty minutes, he felt the pain of waking life. not the seething pain of burrowing spiders, but the subtle pings and pulls that were lost on the inside: the monotonous tow of gravity, the random prickling sensation that accompanied real-life skin, the spine that ached from years of bad posture.

for thirty minutes, jon's mind had been wiped clean. he had forgotten that his son was falling victim to a metaphysical snare. he had forgotten he was cursed with the exasperation of an old man and the virility of a teenager. he had forgotten how much he missed hannah.

for thirty minutes, there was no experience, no plot, no candy-coated terrors or fanatic sexual escapades. there was only steve and the momentary thrill of the unexpected.

jon smiled. he set the timer for two hours of realtime and two hours of perceived time, then pressed start.