Screensaver

“You have been playing for three hours straight. Consider taking a break.”

Ridley pressed the ‘x’ button and dismissed the alert. The shooting noises resumed for another twenty-minute blur before his alarm went off.

07:54

He threw the controller on the beanbag and took a big breath. The coffee table was crowded with opened cans and dirty cups. With his attention off the game, the mix of beer and tequila and who knows what else the guys had brought was overpowering. He grabbed a half-full cup with what looked like wine and drank.

The stale sour cherry taste made him cringe. God knows what that was.

He was at the door when his pocket buzzed. He answered without looking at the screen.

“Yeah?”

“Ridley, this is Jones. There’s an outage and I need you here. When are you coming in?”

“I’m just leaving now. Be there in five.”

The line clicked without another word. Happy Friday, asshole.

Barely a minute later, as he was stepping in the coffee shop, his pocket vibrated again.

“Yes?”

“Ridley, this is Jones,” the voice said. “We have an outage. When can you be here?”

I should get him a coffee too.

“Like I said, on my way. Be there in a blink.”

Click.

The first guy in line was ordering his drink.

“Can I get a long white please? For Carl,” he said.

“Coming right up.”

The bartender was a tall guy of barely twenty. He moved left and right between his stations, pulling levers and pouring liquids. Ridley hadn’t seen him before.

“Single espresso for Carl!”

Oh, you are definitely new.

The guy grabbed his misplaced order and walked out without a word. A guy in a tweed jacket took his place.

“A cappuccino please. Tall, for Scott,” he said.

The bartender took another minute of pushing and pulling and pouring before turning around with a small paper cup.

“Small espresso for Scott!”

Oof.

“Morning sir, how can I help you?” the bartender said. The cappuccino guy was already through the door.

“Uh, yes, hi. Can I get an iced matcha, please? For Ridley.”

“Of course!”

The bartender walked to his station, went through his ritual and walked back a minute later.

“Small espresso for Ridley!”

“Sorry bud, I ordered an iced matcha.”

The bartender’s eyes went wide.

“Oh I’m so sorry! Let me fix that for you!”

He walked back to his gadgets and came back a minute later.

“Espresso for Ridley!”

“Hey man, I know it’s hard—”

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

“For fu— Here, keep it,” he said and put a ten-dollar bill on the counter.

“Hello?”

“Ridley, this is Jones.”

Give me a fucking break.

“We have a code zero. When are you coming in?”

He stepped round the corner and looked up. The glass facade of the DataCentrum building reflected the morning sun right at his eyes.

“Boss, I can almost see you through the window. I’m there in two minutes, okay?”

Click.

He downed his coffee in one go and ran across the avenue. He was through the rotating doors and up on the floor in less than a minute.

“What is going on?”

Jones was standing hunched over at his desk, peering down at his screens while trying to keep the glasses from falling off his nose.

“We have a code zero. Jump in.”

“What happened?”

“Systems in Australia are down. Luckily it’s midnight over there so we have little traffic, but we have to fix it soon.”

“I’m setting up.”

He took two steps and then Jones spoke again.

“Ridley! There’s an outage, I need you!”

Ridley stopped in place and fixed his gaze at his manager. He couldn’t remember him ever making a joke. And if his dead eyes were trying one now, it wasn’t working.

“Is this a joke?”

“We don’t fix this by lunch, our numbers are going down!”

Ridley raised his arms and turned around. He walked past Buck, almost bumping into his belly.

“Hey Rid! How’s traffic?” Buck said in his festive voice.

Ridley sighed.

“Packed. Buck, what’s wrong with him today?”

“What? Who?”

“You know what, never mind.”

He was almost at his desk when Buck spoke again.

“Hey Rid! How’s traffic today? Any gridlocks?” he said, and Ridley could hear the grin on the man’s face.

“What is the matter with everyone today?!”

Dozens of heads were buried in screens and displays, and only a handful reacted. They turned at him, then turned back at the screens.

“Hey fuckers, I’m talking to you.”

Nothing.

He turned toward Buck.

The man was looking at him smiling.

“Hey Rid! Hope traffic wasn’t bad!”

“Oh, fuck this,” he murmured and walked off the floor.

He was out on the street, fishing for the phone in his pocket. He speed-dialled the first number on the list. It took a moment for the request to route through the ten thousand miles all the way down to Sydney. It took another two minutes of ringing for the line to pick up. A grumpy voice came through crystal clear.

“Hello? Rid? Is that you?”

“Sorry for waking you up, Andrew.”

A yawn on the other side.

“Everything okay?”

“I need a reality check, man. I feel like I’m losing my mind. Everyone is acting--”

“Ridley? Is that you brother?”

A void stirred in his stomach.

“Andr— yeah, yeah, it’s me. I- I just had a bad dream.”

“Hey, Ridley, is that you?”

The void grew and it spread up through his chest.

Dread started to creep in.

“Go back to sleep Andrew, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Hey, Ridley, is that you br—”

He clicked off and leaned against the window. His knees were shaking and his stomach felt as if it would drop on the pavement.

“Canary in the area.”

He looked up and saw two men in suits walking toward him. One of them was speaking into his sleeve.

“Radar is not getting enough power. We need one from the new stack.”

They passed him, and he started walking after them.

“Roger that. Radar working again.”

They walked past the office buildings, through the business square and into the old glass-making neighbourhood.

“Signal is strong,” the suit said. “Could be hiding in any of these buildings.”

Ridley hurried up and closed the distance.

“Wait! I’m getting a second reading,” the suit said and the two men stopped. “There’s a second canary.”

Ridley was almost running and was about to grab one of them when a pair of wiry hands pulled him into the alley. He screamed but bony fingers kept his mouth shut.

“Quiet! Let them pass, they’ll hear us.”

“Signal faded out again. Keep searching,” a muffled voice came from the street.

The hand slowly let go and he turned around.

A girl of his age stood in front of him, her face peeking from beneath a red hoodie. Brown locks of hair strayed out from her cap.

“Who are you?” he said.

The girl walked to the edge of the alley and looked out.

“They are gone,” she said. “But they might circle back.”

“Who are you?” Ridley repeated.

The girl walked over to a garbage container and sat down in a half-broken beach chair.

“I’m Leah. I saw you this morning but wasn’t sure if you were awake.”

“You’re not a broken record,” Ridley said.

She smiled.

“What is happening?”

“You were about to find out.”

“You know those men?”

“Yes and no.”

Ridley sighed.

“Listen, I’ve had the worst start of my morning. I’m not in the mood for guessing games,” he said. “What is going on? Why is everyone repeating the same shit over and over? Who were those men?”

The girl was squinting, as if trying to read a broken display.

“You are new to this,” she said.

“New to what?”

“You might want to sit down,” Leah said and pointed at another beach chair next to her.

Ridley shook his head.

“I’m good.”

“Suit yourself,” Leah said and leaned back.

“You are stuck. Awake with me, but stuck with the rest of the brain-dead folk.”

“What happened to them?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure if I wanna know.”

“How are you...” he said and gestured air quotes. “‘Awake’?”

The girl shrugged and lifted her arms in the air.

“Of course. You don’t know.”

“Listen,” she said. “I’ve been living in the same slice of time, over and over again. Nothing ever changes. The same people buy bread, the same people go to the bank. It was the same people getting their coffee, but then you showed up.

“Everyone says and does the same thing on repeat. Sometimes you get an extra line or two, but that’s rare.”

She stretched and yawned.

“Wait until you try to fall asleep with a perpetual sun. It’s been forever and I still haven’t gotten used to it.”

“What?” he said and looked up. “The sun never sets?”

She shook her head.

“Everything is stuck. Well, everything except me and my watch. It’s been ticking away since the start.”

“Your watch is moving forward?”

“Seems to be,” she said and looked at her wrist.

“Three minutes past ten.”

“How long has this been happening?”

“For a while.”

“How long?”

“Jesus dude. Okay.”

She grabbed a backpack from beneath the beach chair. She took out a red notebook and sifted through the pages.

“There. Welcome to day four thousand seven hundred and three,” she said. “Thirteen years.”

“You’ve been living like this for thirteen years?”

Leah smiled, put her hand in the backpack again and pulled out a sandwich. She unwrapped the foil and took a bite.

“You’ve stayed here the whole time?”

“Oh hell no. I’ve been all over,” she said while chewing.

“I drove to the west coast. Twice. Buying anything is tricky at the beginning. You pay, and then they forget you’ve paid a minute later.

“But then you just walk out, come back in, and just say you’ve paid already. That made the second drive there much easier.

“That’s a long drive to make,” Ridley said.

“I really thought my mom wouldn’t be like the rest of them. I went to check and saw I was wrong. The second drive was just… nostalgia, I guess.”

Ridley let her finish the sandwich before asking any more questions.

“What about those men I saw out there?”

“I’ve never talked to them. I don’t want to.”

“What do they want?”

“I don’t know.”

A shadow passed over the alley, but then came back. A figure was standing at the entrance.

“Oh crap,” Leah muttered under her breath and rushed to her feet.

A deep growl echoed between the alley walls.

“You two. Come here.”

Leah stepped forward.

“Can I offer you some candy, sir? I put good price,” she said.

“Stay still,” the man said. He stepped closer and raised his arm up to his mouth. “Identifying potential canary.”

“Can I offer you some candy, sir? I have all kinds of good stuff.”

“Stay! Still!” the man said and kept walking closer.

“My candy is cheap, sir. All kinds of good stuff.”

He was a few feet away from Leah when he raised his arm to his mouth again.

“Negative. Just a frozen legacy.”

The man turned back toward the street.

Leah did not waste a moment.

She sprinted forward and lunged at the man’s back.

She put him in a chokehold and jerked left and right. The man tried to shake her off but she jammed her heel in his groin and the man crumbled to the ground. Metal scraped on metal and a moment later Leah swung a bar that landed with a wet crack.

She called out a moment later.

“Give me a hand!”

Ridley ran to her.

“What have you done?!”

“I’m not letting them get me,” she said. “My backpack. Bring it over.”

Ridley stood frozen, looking at the blood trickling from the man’s forehead.

“Now, dude!”

He ran there and back. Leah dug in the backpack and pulled out zip ties.

“Help me roll him.”

They grunted, turned him face-down and Leah zipped his hands behind his back.

“We have to go. The others will find us,” Leah said and ran toward the other end of the alley.

“Wait!” Ridley called. “I want answers!”

“You’re going to get us caught!”

“No. I want to know.”

He bent down and picked a half-filled bucket with what he hoped was just mud. He dumped it on the man. The liquid splashed all over and some splashed back at Ridley’s trousers.

The man gasped and jerked to consciousness. He coughed and spat and tugged at the ties.

“Let me go. Let me go!”

“Only after you answer my questions,” Ridley said. “Did you do this?”

“Do what?” the man said.

“Don’t play dumb. What is this? What’s happened? Why is everyone stuck in a loop?”

“Nothing’s happened. Come on, untie me.”

“I need better answers!”

Leah was standing at the end of the alley.

“We need to go! They can be here any moment!”

Ridley took a step back.

The man pulled against the ties one more time, but then gave up.

“Damn it. Wait, I’ll tell you.”

Ridley walked closer again.

“Speak. Speak!”

“It’s the compute.”

“What compute?”

“The compute resources. They can’t support this anymore.”

“Support what? You’re speaking gibberish!”

“Support the simulation!”

Ridley took a step back.

The man spoke again.

“The canaries. They are preventing the migration. A migration to shift the simulation compute from one stack to another.”

“Man, start making sense!”

“This is all a simulation. Running on a legacy stack,” he said. He then spoke slowly. “Slow. Hardware.”

Leah yelled. “He's stalling! We must go!”

“Replacement has been prolonged for hundreds of human years. And now the old stack finally failed.”

“That can’t be,” Ridley murmured.

Leah got closer.

“He’s lying. They just want to make us like the rest. Dumb and lifeless.”

The man stirred again.

“The people you met. It’s their screensavers. It’s the default setting when the connection to the simulation engine is lost. When we boot up the new stack, everything will be back to normal. Just let me go, come on.”

“Why are we not screen-saving?”

Leah got closer again and stood behind Ridley.

“You are running on the new stack,” the man answered. “We just wanted to run some basic tests, but someone screwed up and deployed you into the live environment.”

“What about me?” Leah asked.

The man on the ground managed to roll himself on his back and looked at her.

“You… You are the other one,” the man said. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“I knew it. We have to go! They want to—”

Another shadow stopped and hovered over the alley entrance.

Two men in suits walked from the street. Ridley turned to run but another pair of men appeared at the other end of the alley. One of the men walked forward and smiled at them.

“It’s okay, Mr. Owens. We will get you back to your normal life right now,” he said. “And thank you for bringing us to Ms. Stanley. We’ve been looking for her for a while.”

“What will you do to us?” Ridley asked.

“Nothing bad. We will just make sure you go back to living your life as you were,” the man said. “Like so,” he said and snapped his fingers.

“No! N—” Leah screamed but her voice disappeared. When Ridley turned, she was gone.

“What have you done to her?!”

“Don’t worry Mr. Owens. She is back to safety, I promise.”

Ridley stepped back but only found the cold metal of the garbage container. The man spoke again.

“We spent a lot of resources trying to find her, Ridley. Thank you for helping us. As a gesture of gratitude, we will now let you choose.”

“Choose what?”

“This world will be migrated now. The process will take between two and two hundred human weeks. Due to the nature of our technology, we cannot give you an exact timeline.

“But you have a choice. You can either go back right now, or stay here until it is done. If you choose to stay here, we will make sure you have everything you want.”

“I would be living with... the others?”

“That is one downside, yes.”

“And you will track me?”

“Yes.”

“Is this a dream?” Ridley asked.

“Sure, Ridley.”

“I think I would like to wake up.”

The man smiled.

“Good choice.”

***

Ridley threw the controller on the beanbag and got up. He grabbed his backpack and stopped at the door to look at the mess of empty cans and cups crowding the coffee table. I’ll clean up later.

There was no line in the coffee shop. He stepped up to the counter and the bartender greeted him.

She wore a red sweater and her short brown hair was curled.

“What can I get you?”

“I’d like an iced matcha, please.”

“Sure! Your name?”

“Ridley.”

“Matcha for Ridley! Coming right up!”

Ridley watched her as she whisked the green powder. She seemed familiar, like a face he had dreamed of night after night.

“Do… Do I know you?” he asked.

She stopped, smiled at him, then poured the green liquid in a cup.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. You ever been to the Third Eye Temple?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s just this spiritual workshop I organize. Thought you might have seen me there.”

She poured the milk foam and closed the lid.

“Name is Leah,” she said as she passed him the cup.

“Nice to meet you, Leah. I’m Ridley.”

She smiled.

“I know.”

Ridley was turned to leave when the girl called after him.

“I almost forgot! Feel free to sample our latest Meditation Inducer. I make it right here in the shop!”

Ridley turned to see a dozen cups standing on the counter corner, filled with what looked like wine.