Svetlana went to therapy on the deck of the Titanic—not for some ironic statement about her sinking well-being, but because mind uploads could do therapy anywhere, and the ship had always been her place to relax. It was classy, elegant. And gliding peacefully over the ice-fields of Europa.
Her therapist, Declan, presented as an older man in a black suit, which was on fire. Declan had been uploaded way back when the server-city had been founded, in the late 21st century. He was a good listener. If anyone could help her overcome simulation dysphoria, it was him.
“I’ve been here thirty subjective years,” said Svetlana. “When will things feel right?”
“Some uploads beat sim dysphoria in days. Others, centuries. SD’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Declan wrote on a clipboard between sips of coffee; some uploads clung to meatspace habits like childhood friends.
“How have your symptoms been lately?” he asked.
“It’s everything. Eating. Sleeping. The way stuff smells.”
“Visual perception?”
“No.”
“That’s good. Eating—is it the flavors?”
“It’s how food feels. There’s no friction. No messiness. Why does everything have to be so fucking clean?”
“Anger. We’re getting somewhere.”
“Like, sometimes you should bite your tongue by mistake. Or you drip shit on yourself.”
“Most uploads are glad to leave behind such annoyances. Why do you suppose you’re different?”
“They’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human.”
“What it’s like to be meat. Uploads are still human, Svetlana. Do meatspacers crave stone-age discomforts?”
“There’s comfort and there’s sterility.”
He slung one leg over the other and leaned his clipboard on it. His blue-gray eyes in the dull sun were faultlessly, almost frustratingly, unaccusing. Some therapists were mirrors, reflecting your emotions back at you; Declan was a glacier, all opaque professionalism.
She hated complaining, even to him. Her copy-dynasty had a rep for toughness. Her and her copies repaired the pipes that cooled the city’s computers. Her kind were the soldiers of this world. Soldiers didn’t complain.
But under her toughness was still the anxious twenty-year-old from Omsk whose disease had made life in meatspace too difficult. Even Declan—who knew everything about her, who’d even emulated her brain-states during deep sessions—even he couldn’t know the specific texture of her suffering, any more than she could know his.
“Normally I don’t discuss my past,” he said softly. “But it may be germane.” He sipped his coffee. “I was uploaded at seventy-one.”
“That old? Really?”
“Older brains being less plastic, my SD was considerable.”
“How’d it present?”
“Balance. Felt like I was at sea all the time. It lasted one hundred and ten subjective years.”
She blinked in surprise. That span might have been nothing to Declan, who’d experienced subjective centuries, most of them at faster clock-speeds than hers. But that was more than double her meatspace and digital lifespans combined.
“Luckily my case was mild,” he said. “A three on the Carmack scale.”
“How’d you treat it?”
“Therapy. SD almost always goes away eventually. Point is, you’re not alone. Part of you still thinks you’re in meatspace. Still craves the grit of it. The ugliness and messiness. Those parts must accept that you’re never going back. This is your world now.”
Never going back. Same words she’d heard on her uploading day, from the woman paid to laser-cut her brain into scannably thin slices. It had been a last-minute warning, a chance to back out.
Svetlana tasted regret. Maybe she should’ve rolled the dice with her disease.
She went to the gunwale. Jupiter sat on the horizon like a huge jawbreaker, its beige-and-honey whorls chewed with storms.
Europa’s real surface was -160 Celsius. This Europa’s was 15. The steady breeze suddenly seemed mocking in its artificiality. She remembered how real wind crawled through her hair and burned her cheeks, carrying the subtle dirtiness of the city.
She remembered. That was her problem.
“Do you regret it?” she asked.
“Coming here?” He stood beside her. “Who doesn’t, at times? Regret’s natural. Curing SD doesn’t change that.”
“I’m scared I’ll never get through this, Declan.”
“Do you trust me?”
She nodded.
“Then trust the process. You will beat this. You will. I want to hear you say it.”
She watched the stars turn in vacuum, concealing arid calculations.
She looked into Declan’s sympathetic eyes.
“I’ll beat this,” she said firmly, hoping it was true.
He smiled.
About the author:
Jordan Chase-Young is an American-born SFF writer living in Australia. He’s kind of obsessed with the future. Just how weird will it be? His stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Escape Pod, and elsewhere.
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