text: Beep! Beep! Beep! Symone turned and slapped at the alarm clock, stretching and staring at the ceiling in the grey morning light, shaking off sleep. The dream plagued her again: being trapped in her old office, stuck in the musty, dingy brown walls. Nothing like a dream job turned into a nightmare to smash the visions of your youth. Then again, it was just a nightmare. She left that job fifteen years ago. She sat up and gently pulled the covers over Galen’s shoulders, mussing his short, dark blonde hair. He was still on medical leave, recovering from emergency surgery for a burst appendix. She flipped on the bathroom light and studied her sleepy face in the mirror. It was just a nightmare. She wasn’t an uncertain twenty-something trying to make her mark in the world. She was a middle-aged woman making the best of life. She scoffed at the few grey strands in her dark hair and splashed water on her face as a prick of memory rose in her mind. Stupid nightmare. Those days were over. She might not be classified as “successful,” but she was older, wiser, and calmer than she had been as a hot-headed youth. Sure, things were tough with Galen recovering from surgery. That sudden illness was a shock that shook up their world, but he was recovering. It would pass, like all other things. She moved through the rest of her morning routine, shoving the remnants of her former life nightmare into the background of routine. It wasn’t until she glanced at the date at the bottom of her computer two hours later that she realized it was exactly twenty-five years since she started working. She sighed. Some career, she thought as the clacking of her colleague’s computer keys rode over the drab cubicle walls . At least she knew where that nightmare came from. It must have been some subconscious memory of her dreams of being a psychiatrist dying to this mundane reality, combined with the stress of Galen’s surgery and recovery. If only she had been better and made it into graduate school. Or reapplied after a few years of working and retaking the Graduate Record Exam exam. But this was her reality, and twenty-five years meant she was vested in the company retirement system. It might have been two and a half decades of dull grind, but at least she was guaranteed to get something back for it eventually. It wasn’t what she wanted career-wise, but it was a goal achieved. Now to make it to retirement - ~*~ Beep! Beep! Beep! Symone turned and tapped off the alarm clock as strong arms wrapped around her. “Why do you set that thing so early?” Killian asked. She turned and smiled, running her hand through his curly hair. “To spend more time with you before work.” “Tell your clients to wait. You have a life, too.” She smiled. “They rely on me to keep them straight.” He smiled back, pulling her against his strong body. “They need all the help they can get. The pandemic messed everybody up.” He kissed her. “How did you sleep?” She turned on her back. “I had the nightmare again.” He sat up and looked down at her. “Again?” She nodded, remembering the drab grey walls. “It was like being in a rat maze.” “Did you ever work in an office?” “Never. It’s always been labs or colleges until I switched to helping you with the AI neural interface after the pandemic.” He laid back down, practically on top of her. “We’re lucky they have you.” She wrapped her arms around him. “You’re lucky I said ‘no’ to medical school to marry you, Galen.” His face fell. “Who’s Galen?” She stared at him, confused. “What do you mean?” He pulled back. “You called me Galen.” She paused, spots floating across her eyes. The nightmare returned, sitting in that cramped square paralyzed with a dull despair of life floating away. Symone forced a smile. “I’m sorry, that nightmare is still in my head. It’s a character in the book I’m writing.” Killian relaxed. “No wonder you have nightmares. You always get stuck in your worlds when you’re writing.” Symone pulled Killian against her. “How about bringing me back to this one?” ~*~ Beep! Beep! Beep! Symone sighed and ran her hands over her face, leaning back in the creaky chair as far as it would allow. The fluorescent lights almost aggravated her headache like that stupid, jamming printer did. “Symone, shut that thing up!” her supervisor’s voice shouted from the office next to her desk. “I’m on a conference call.” “Sorry,” she mumbled, standing and stomping toward the dot matrix printer. Sure enough, the cheap paper was shredded on the invoices she sent to the printer. She sighed, opening the disagreeable machine and tugging at the stuck paper. “Why do you have to be so loud?” her supervisor snapped as she stood and slammed her door. So much for that “dream job opportunity” after graduation. This was a nightmare. The light glinted on her diamond ring and she stopped, sinking back into her chair. She missed college and the dreams she laid aside when she didn’t get into graduate school. Maybe she could get back on track another way. She and Galen were too broke for graduate school after their huge wedding, but she had wanted to be a writer, too. Maybe she could do that instead. She could help people through her stories until she could get back to school to help them in real life. One thing was for sure, she thought as she yanked at the paper in the ancient printer: this wasn’t helping anybody. ~*~ Beep! Beep! Beep! Symone bolted upright in bed, gasping. The nightmare again. She gasped, breathing out the lingering musty scent of office machinery and printer dust. “I’ll be glad when we get the AI interfaced through our neural chips so we don’t need that noise to wake up anymore,” Killian mumbled from his pillow. Symone turned and smacked off the alarm clock. A hand rubbed her back. “Are you ok?” She trembled. “No.” “Nightmare again?” “It’s so real.” She leaned back against him. “The printer jammed.” “Printer?” he said. “Nobody’s used printers in over a decade. I thought you said this was a nightmare about your first job?” “It was. The dot matrix printer jammed -” “Dot matrix printer?” Killian laughed. “Whose first job was this, yours or your grandmother’s?” Symone froze. “What day is it?” “Friday, which means fun day,” he teased, wrapping his arms around her. She twisted and looked at the date on her phone. July 29, 2124. “What is this?” she whispered. “I’m supposed to tell you to let these nightmares go, but I enjoy helping you get over them,” Killian said as he wrapped himself around her. ~*~ Beep! Beep! Beep! “She’s shifting again,” the voice said in the darkness. “Already? It’s getting more frequent.” “This subject has been the most active in the neural interface,” the voice said. “Most of the others phase in and out of activity, like circadian rhythms. She never fully drops. She shifts in different patterns.” “I wonder what she’s seeing,” the other voice said. “The neural stimulation seems to last longer on her. She doesn’t need to be stimulated as often to power the AI.” “It appreciates that, but her neural imagery isn’t consistent. It jumps from one reality to another.” “It looks like she was a mid-level administrative worker in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Wait, she was also a writer. She published a series of science fiction books.” “Maybe shifting between her own life and the stories she wrote.” Laughter. “Most people see the life they had before being integrated with the AI, but these artists have a unique way of coping with the system. I guess the creative mind powers the interface differently.” “She has a higher energy output, which feeds the AI more information. Good for it, but is it safe for her? Her stress hormones spike when the realities shift.” “Most people believe they’re waking from dreams when they shift. Perhaps it’s the same for her, just more often since she’s phasing between the world she had and the world she created.” A pause. “I don’t know if it’s safe, but she’s the best biological power source the AI has.” ~*~ Beep! Beep! Beep! Symone squeezed her eyes tight against the bright light pressing against her lids. “Symone, can you hear me?” She shivered as a chill ran over her naked body. Her eyes opened a slit to see two male figures standing over her. Galen reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “Welcome back.” “What happened?” she asked, sitting up. “We had to put you in cryo stasis,” Killian said, his long, curly hair brushing against her other arm as he handed her a robe. “The AI malfunctioned when the EMP bomb went off. We all passed out, but you had neurological damage. We had to put you under so the nanotech could heal you on the journey.” “EMP? Journey?” she turned to Galen, reaching for him. “What happened?” Galen looked away. “A dissident group launched EMP bombs around the country to put out the AI,” Killian said. “They claimed that the AI in our neural chips caused the pandemic. At any rate, people were dying again. We had to leave. We just made it on the last flight.” “How can AI cause COVID?” Killian’s brow furrowed. “COVID? That was over 100 years ago.” She looked at Galen. “What is he talking about?” “I did everything I could to fix things, Symone, but I couldn’t,” Galen said. “You didn’t hear me, so I couldn’t bring you back.” He pulled back. “I can’t reach you anymore.” She shivered. “Where are we?” Killian took her hand and pulled her toward the red glow in the window. “The moon would have been ideal, but the dissidents can still reach us there. The scientists at the settlement are willing to help us with the AI integration with our neural chips, and they think we’ll be far enough away from Earth to stay safe until our work is complete.” He pulled her close. “Welcome to Mars.” “Galen doesn’t have a neural chip,” she said, turning. The room was empty. Killian took her shoulders and turned her back toward him, staring deep into her eyes. “Galen isn’t real. The nightmares aren’t real. Nothing is real.” He kissed her. “The only thing real is you. What do you want, Symone?” Symone stared at the red planet, shivering. Life is what you make it and reality is how you create it. She knew what she was now. Not an office drone, or a scientist. She was a writer, a creator, a builder of realities. She smiled as her body warmed, awake to the limitless possibilities. Most people only have one story. She had millions, and they were all waiting for her to bring them to life. And when one reality broke, she’d build another one. She could have it all. All she had to do was accept it. She smiled in the red glow. “Let’s get started.”