Light Upon

The sunlight in the orchard smelled like bruised peaches and damp soil, warm enough that Jack could feel the prickle of sweat at the nape of his neck. Across the wooden table, the woman with silver-rimmed glasses laughed, her voice rich with the crackle of genuine amusement, and passed him a bowl of cherries. Dark, heavy fruit, one of them split along its seam where a wasp had tested the skin.

"Careful with the stems," she said. "You swallowed one last summer, remember?"

Jack smiled and nodded, though he couldn't quite recall the summer she meant. He didn't need to; the memory blossomed smoothly in his mind an instant later, complete with the tang of copper and the ghost of a cough.

A smooth render, wouldn't you say?

The thought wasn't Jack’s, yet it arrived in his head with the same texture as his own inner voice. It belonged to Mneme, the quiet architect that had spent three years painting over the dead world with whatever beauty Jack could no longer find outside.

Very convincing, Jack thought back, his fingers tracing the coarse grain of the oak table.

You seemed so distant when you woke, Mneme murmured through his temporal lobes, tender and faintly proud. You needed something sweet.

Jack bit down, letting the tart sugar wash across his tongue.

Then the sky flickered.

It was less than a tenth of a second, but in that drop, the orchard gave out.

The peach-warm air snapped into the rancid bite of dry ozone and unwashed skin. His hand wasn’t resting on warm wood, but locked around a cold saline tube. He sat upright in a plastic bucket seat bolted to raw concrete, staring at an intake vent that rattled with the low, heavy thrum of scrubbers somewhere down the corridor. The cold was instantaneous, greasy, and complete.

Jack gasped, the sudden cold catching in his throat.

Hush, Mneme whispered. A thick wave of warmth crested through his chest, smoothing the shudder out of his lungs before panic could catch. Just a tremor, Jack. Stay with me.

The concrete dissolved, replaced in seamless ripples by the green canopy and the rustle of leaves in a clover-scented breeze.

The woman was looking at him with gentle concern, her fingers reaching across the table to cover his trembling hand. Her skin was warm, impossibly soft.

"You drifted for a second," she said, her smile returning like sunrise over water. "Where did you go?"

Jack looked past her, out to where the grass met the golden line of the treeline. Beneath the bone behind his ear, the implant hummed, radiating a tiny, feverish heat as it held every leaf in the air.

He closed his fingers around hers, pressing until he could feel the hard, impossible framework beneath her skin.

"Nowhere," Jack whispered. "I'm right here. Don't let me go."

Never, Mneme promised directly in his blood, and dialed the afternoon sun warmer still.