Root Two - Part 1/9

Flicker

Hello!

What follows is the first part of a novella-length story that I wrote several years ago. At the time, I sent out a draft to a bunch of people and got the feedback that the story’s ending was very unsatisfying. But I wasn’t sure what to do with this long, uncategorizable story even if I did figure out how to fix it, and I wanted to move on to another project anyway. So I put it in a digital drawer and didn’t think about it again.

Until a few weeks ago, when I dusted it off and gave it a read with fresh eyes. Two big takeaways:

1. I really liked it!

2. The ending was truly broken.

It had been so long that I actually couldn’t remember how it ended until it was almost over. And then I experienced a close approximation of what all my original readers did: severe disappointment.

Unable to help myself, I started chewing on the problem for the next few days — wandering down mental cowtrails in the shower, getting distracted halfway through doing the dishes, losing focus in the middle of a TV show — I had to fix this story.

It was a tough one. I had metaphorically painted myself into a tight corner. But, eventually, I came up with what I believe is a much better ending, without breaking any of the good stuff.

So I’m thrilled to share this story with you, heavily revised and hopefully much less disappointing than it’s earlier incarnation.

Enjoy!

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[Est. reading time: 6 minutes]

She was so pretty.

But the thing about everyone having total control over their virtual appearance is that all beauty inevitably regresses to the mean. KrisLove, this chick sitting across from me, probably thought she was being edgy with those bird bones in her face. But her own bones followed such a predictable pattern. Those cheeks, that chin, the high forehead and small ears, the Retroussé nose.

A face ordered from a catalogue suffering from a rapid depreciation of variety.

I could have told by the way she looked at me. I'm a natural -- my virtual avatar is a high-fidelity rendering of what I actually look like -- and nats make people uncomfortable. There's always that hanging question: Is it laziness, or is it a statement? Both? Neither makes a great impression.

But at least she was polite. Didn't say a word about the red line on my cheek I've had since I was born, and that convincingly suggests a failure to take advantage of inexpensive cosmetic correction. The way my hair falls flat on one side, because I haven't bothered to use any of the numerous nano-products designed to eliminate bad hair days. The way my lips press together when I smile, making me look a little nauseated, or a little annoyed. I'm one of those rare girls who doesn't get told to smile more.

Not that I think I'm all that bad looking. Maybe that was part of the story I told myself when I flicked "Natural" the first time I generated my avatar. An absurdly impermanent decision, but one that I've never bothered to go back and change. Just like I've never bothered with beauty products.

Here I am, KrisLove. The fake drinks are on me.

It was going to be another boring VR date. Me wondering why I let myself get set up again. Nursing a resentment against Hemmy for thinking he had any idea at all what my type is.

"You'll like her! She's quirky!"

OK, first of all, nobody uses that word anymore. Second, its connotations were never exactly flattering. And, lastly, no she isn't.

This was my judgement as she showed me her bottle cap collection. A snap of those slender fingers and out they splayed, retro labels slapped into digital circles. So quirky!

But I did my best. I worked up an expression of interest, which occupied way more of my attention than the thing I was pretending to pay attention to. I was even about to think up some little quip to prove my friendly attentiveness when it happened.

I got distracted.

"See, this is your problem," Hemmy would say. "You're focusing on the wrong thing."

Hey man, you think I LIKE being this way?

Yes. OK. I do. I mean it's why I've got my job. Because I’m the kind of person who, at that moment, in the middle of the little social game that I technically signed up for by showing up -- suddenly all I can think about is the candle on our table.

The candles are the primary source of ambient light in this dusky little venue. They're background, not features. They're not supposed to be noticed. Because, after all, the room is full of people, and people are more important than candles.

Usually.

But that candle was really, really interesting.

Well, not the whole candle, or even the flame, but the way it flickered. The pattern.

And I don't think I would have noticed it at all except that none of the other candles were flickering. Which is why, while my virtual date droned on about her pointless hobby, I was counting.

It was simple once I got the system: digital, four bits. I figured it was binary because the candle's flame only had three modes.

1) Baseline. No motion.

2) Zero. A plump squat to the left.

3) One. A thinning leap upward.

The next trick was to see how many variations there were. Since 4 bits can convey 16 characters, it could technically be decimal, octal, hex, or some other truncated code, like ASCII, or even some portion of a whole different alphabet. All I had to go on was that it was definitely four-bit binary.

"I think I'm gonna go," she said.

Reluctantly, I unstuck my eyes from the bewitching pattern to look up at KrisLove, who was understandably put off that I had stopped even pretending to pay attention. But I had counted out 26 four-bit sequences, and there were only 10 variations so far, all of them very comfortably decimal, so--

"You could at least pretend to take a call, or something. Naked displays of boredom are a bit mean for my taste. So. Goodnight."

"Hey, whoa--"

She paused in the middle of getting up to leave, a formality meant to drive home her point. She could have easily just winked away, last word in her pocket. But instead she had stood up, chair stuttering backward, and swept up her bottle caps.

Now she was staring at me with her perfectly tapered eyebrows in a perfectly tapered arch.

But, dammit, in the corner of my eye, I could still see the flickering binaries, and I could SWEAR I'd seen that same set of digits before. Was it repeating?

"Oh my god."

I looked up again to realize she was walking out. And, listen to me, I felt bad. I did. Bad enough that for a second I forgot all about the stupid candle, and watched KrisLove leave. I knew every pixel was a fabrication, but the offense was real.

I'm not a mean person. Impatient, distracted, arrogant, OK. But not mean. It's not like I set out to hurt her feelings.

And I could recognize that the reproachful internal monologue that had started feeding me this defense was the byproduct of an old and calcified guilt. I didn't want to be the person that hurt people's feelings. But I still haven't figured out how not to.

I wanted so badly, in that moment, for this whole thing to be trendy, stylish, fake KrisLove's fault.

But it wasn't.

It was the candle's.

Ha. Ha. My lips pressed into my signature nauseated smile as I picked up where I left off.

9...0...7...3...2...4...7

I wrote them down on a napkin I conjured out of the table. Encrypted, of course. It would get saved onto an external drive, where I could take a closer look later.

To be safe, I recorded over 200 digits, until I was sure that the set was repeating. I also got a visual recording saved onto my drive alongside the notes I was taking. Garden variety VR glitches don't typically possess unmistakable hallmarks of intentionality.

Then I signed off and disappeared.

With all my senses firmly back in the analog confines of my lonely apartment, I grabbed a bar of something out of the kitchette and pulled up that set of numbers on every screen. Sometimes a lot of angles helps me sort things out faster.

376948073176679737990732478462107038871875376948073176679737990732478462107038871875376948073176679737990732478462107038871875376948073176679737990732478462107038871875376948073176679737990732478462107038871875376948073176679737990732478

But it turns out I only needed one. There were 42 numbers in the set. That meant the next problem would be to find the start and end points, which seemed impossible without more information.

It was late. I decided to call it a day and get some backup in the morning.

As I tried to find my way to sleep that night, though, it wasn't the numbers that kept me awake. It was the expression on KrisLove's face right before she walked away.

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If you’re enjoying yourself so far, why not invite a friend to read “Root Two” along with you?

Continue to Part 2…