He'd been here before, once or twice. The bleach-white walls were familiar, as were the massive, cluttered workstations. Weaving his way through the maze of equipment, Harry spotted his mother's dark head by the far wall.

Erica turned at the sound of his clumsy approach. She lounged in a chair, positioned presumably at the same desk that he'd called her from.

Harry stopped short as they locked eyes. It had been a while since they'd seen each other in person. Now, standing in front of her, there was a sudden sense of apprehension. She never did anything without a reason, his mother. Too often, however, he was never given the chance to follow those paths of logic.

"Well?" He said, finally.

She lifted herself onto her feet. "You will never see Annika again."

Her words had been echoed already that day- by Dolores, his own despairing mind. But coming from her, so matter-of-fact, it truly felt final. A wire, drawn taunt within his mind, finally snapped, and he gave in.

"Oh." was all he could say. He felt like crying.

"I did not say I could bring her back." Erica said. "All I promised was the truth- what truly happened to her." She strode away from Harry, towards a different set of doors then the ones Harry had used to enter. Numbly, he moved to follow. Somewhere, under the grief, a small spark flared- he owed it to Annika to understand her fate, at least.

Erica was forced to press her fingers against a pad in the doorframe, then submit a code in the accompanying keypad. Then finally, were they able to step through. Harry glanced at the awning, read the heavy, block letters that loomed above: Reclamation Unit Laboratories.

"Think about the Undoings, Harry. What does the concept, the process itself remind you of?"

The room they had entered was vastly different. Observational equipment and dissection tools were replaced by huge, hulking computer banks and wide-screen monitors. The centerpiece of the space was a massive terminal in the center. Its facade was oddly simple- just a single monitor and a rudimentary control pad. As they passed, Harry couldn't help but shiver at the thought of these unfathomable machines.

Erica led them to a cluster of servers. Harry followed, struggling to make sense of her questions. "I don't understand what you're asking," he mumbled.

Erica stopped short and began to manipulate one of the sprawling control panels, the monitors above them coming to life.

"Think about it like this." She sounded peeved, irritated that he couldn't keep up. "When there's an issue in the coding of virtual space, or a video game, or some other attempt at a fabricated world, there's a term people use to describe such damage."

Annoyed with her attitude, Harry took a moment to think. And suddenly, it came to him.

"They're glitches." He said. "The Undoings are glitches in reality."

"Oh, they're glitches," she smirked, mirthlessly. "But calling it reality is a stretch." Harry looked up, distracted by the image Erica had conjured up on screen.

Erica suddenly laughed, startling him. She gestured to the feed: a dim, barren room that held two figures, their motionless bodies suggesting slumber. "I could be imprisoned for showing you this, Harry." The odd, almost eager edge to her voice was at odds with her words.

Unsettled, he leaned in for a closer look. The pair was a man and a woman, bodies horizontal, eyes closed. Each figure had their own individual bed; strange, hulking contraptions that brought to mind the invasive medical equipment of a hospital.

"Wait..." Harry trailed off, eyes widening as another figure entered the room. "Those are Annika's parents."

"Watch," was all Erica said. The new figure was a woman in a white uniform of sorts, adding to the odd hospital thematics. She moved from one sleeping body to the other, inspecting the odd branching tubes and arms of the beds. Harry realized with dawning horror that the protrusions had been inserted directly into their bodies, particularly their heads. A nimbus of thin wires surrounded each one, like a halo.

"What's wrong with them?" He asked breathlessly. "Why are they lying like that?"

"Look!" Erica's change in pitch was startling. "Look at them. Their faces! Their bodies." There's something horribly wrong here, Harry thought. He saw an odd gauntness to their faces, not present in his meeting with them earlier. Their limbs, stick-like and limp under the thin blankets. Seemingly satisfied with their condition, the nurse then knelt down to inspect a solid-looking block that sat between the two. The object was pocked with an array of lights and indicators, all of which seemed synced up at the moment- a pulsing, slow beat of rust-red lighting.

"What's wrong with them?" Harry repeated himself, stricken.

"The real Dolores and Jackson are people you've never met. And will never meet." Erica turned away from the screen to face him, ignoring the nurse's retreat. "New Matrica is not a city, Harry. It's not a place on the map." That eager, chilling voice had returned. It left Erica sounding almost fanatical, as if she were preaching. It's an experiment, a hope, a test! But like all experiments, something unexpected happened."

Behind them, ignored, the nurse had returned on-screen. She stood before the beds, bending down again to place a simple vase atop the strange blinking thing. Contained within was a delicate bundle of fresh, red roses.

...

"This place isn't real," Erica's sudden emotion had since subsided, and she'd returned to a flat, emotionless tone. "The entire city is a facade- a long-term virtual space."
"That's impossible."

She glanced at him, unimpressed. "People disappear into thin air, and you find that impossible?" When he didn't respond, she smirked, continued.

"Almost half a century ago, we'd selected a few thousand participants, the ones who won the lottery..." For just a moment, she trailed off before speaking again. "Each of them had their memory terminated. They replaced them with standardized histories- something malleable. A past where they were born and raised in a city that never existed- New Matrica,"

She gestured around them, fingers splayed open. "A massive, multi-server virtual environment was developed. One that could be interacted with in real-time. It was complex enough to adapt and constantly shift, while being near-identical to actual reality's laws and physics. In other words, they built it so no one would notice the difference."

"They?" Harry felt himself going numb.

"I was younger than you when they hooked me up. We were the skeleton crew, playing the role of scientists and politicians. The only ones who knew."

"You can't prove any of this."

"But I can." And with a press of a button, the monitor's feed shifted, and Harry came face-to-face with a warped reflection of his mother.

"That's me," Erica said. They both looked at her thin face, her still, silent body. Her hair was buzzcut-short, her figure small and frail compared to the woman sitting next to him- but Harry couldn't deny the resemblance.

"Okay." Harry took slow, deep breaths. He thought of Dolores, the rest of the Purists. If they only knew the nature of the world around them- assuming this wasn't all some twisted joke. "If we're all asleep, living in this-this fantasy, then-" He turned to her, suddenly excited. "When someone is Undone, they're just waking up, aren't they. Returning to reality!" He gestured to the monitor. "Can you show me Annika? Please?"
Erica didn't answer. She made no move to manipulate the control panel, either. Watching her, Harry's jubilance slowly faded. Something about her story didn't add up, he realized. There was one glaring hole in this horrid explanation.

"I know what you're going to ask," Erica spoke, watching the confusion wash across his face. "Despite everything, the trial was a success. We proved a human being wouldn't go insane with prolonged exposure to cyberspace. That people could grow, find happiness, fulfilment. Be disappointed, lose it all. That they could live full lives. What we didn't predict was just how accurate the program was." She turned to him, staring Harry down, dead in the eyes. "It shouldn't be possible, after all. But twenty-five years ago, the first child was born in virtual reality."

"We were shocked. Terrified. The child had no damn body. The program was too accurate, too advanced. We never predicted that coding and binary language could replace DNA, that New Matrica itself had analyzed the human mind, and created its own. You don't have a father, Harry. You never did. You're just a jangled copy of me, created after I attempted to force the program."

She gripped his wrists. Her hands felt solid, corporeal, the grip painful. "Don't you see? We couldn't shut New Matrica down. We couldn't wake up. Because of you. And Annika. And every impossible, no not impossible- artificial human we've inadvertently created. Don't you see Harry? There is no Annika. Not anymore. There were too many of you. Your software is huge and draining- and New Matrica began to fail. The Undoings were a necessary response from the city, the program."

"You deleted us?" Harry clutched himself, squeezing his own flesh tight. The pain was reassuring. I can feel myself, touch myself. I can hurt myself. I'm real, you bastard.

Erica watched him with a practiced eye. She seemed to find his expressions fascinating. "You were never real to begin with. After years of interacting with your program, watching you mimic life, your false attempts at infancy, pubescence- you and your brethren will all be cleared away by the program, viewed as massive junk data. The day is coming where we won't need Reclamation anymore- where we can let you all go. And then, finally," for the first time that night, Erica's smile was genuine. "We can finally wake up."

"No." Harry murmured. He rocked back and forth on the chair, his movements infantile. "No. You're my mother. My father left when I was a child. You're just telling me this to avoid saving Annika." He was sobbing now, almost blubbering on himself. "My Annika!"

Erica looked at him, her eyes bright. "It's incredible really. You really do seem almost human." She got up, strode away from him. "But now, we have all the data we need, thanks to the Reclamation system- there's really just no reason for you to cry anymore." She stopped at the huge machine they had passed by earlier. Pressing her finger against the screen, Erica allowed the terminal to shake itself awake. Harry watched mutely at the shuddering, hulking thing, his mother working languidly, her back to him.

"You were one of the more interesting ones, Harry. I'm excited to see what comes of your blueprint." She cocked her head, regarded him with a gaze that looked almost affectionate.

He stared back at her, the woman who had played mother to him. She was one amongst the many, a self-autonomous actor surrounded by delusions.

He had tried, done everything he could to bring her back. Erica's words seemed to slip off the edges of his mind. There was a deep imprint within him that pushed everything else to the side. He saw the face of his lover, smelled the scent of spring she adored.

His mother pressed a button, and Harry was Undone.