Brutalist Stories #51

She rolled over to me and said, ‘Where does trust come from?” I just stared back at her, looking into those deep blue eyes, the weak morning sun coming through the blinds, highlighting the dust in the air and the wisps of blonde hair that fell around her face.

“Time, I guess time would be the easiest answer,” I replied and turned and sat on the edge of the bed. That’s all I could come up with, ‘time,’ but looking back, that was as good an answer as any. What else is there? You know, people that come and go and the best we’ve got is ‘time’ to see whether or not they’re worthy of our trust, if we’re worthy of theirs.

We’d had plenty of time together. Jacked in and lined up, same usual fairy tale as the millions of lost souls that relied on the L.Y.N.K network to have some semblance of life. After the Big Meltdown of ’86 and the fallout that didn’t hit until a generation after had been born, those of us that got served a bad batch had to rely on the network. We didn’t have much to give, so they built this virtual world where we could still be productive, in some form or another, I guess it was better than wiping out an entire generation and trying to start again.

I’d met Lucy in one of the regular bars that I’d hit up, funny thing getting a buzz on while sat in a virtual bar of a virtual world full of other virtual nobodies that just wanted to try and forget. Sat there, in the Vine and sat in my chair at home, a bottle of bourbon hooked into my intravenous feed, dripping in while I sipped at a virtual glass.

Wasn’t often a girl would come into that place, but sure enough she walked in and her avatar had some sort of glow I’d not seen before. Up she comes and hell, half the risk of trying to talk to anyone in the L.Y.N.K is that they might be completely different in person from who or what you’re talking to inside the programme. She had a glow, and she came and sat down, right next to me and ordered the same drink and I had to let out a small laugh. Jesus, I thought, what am I going to get myself into here, but you know, I couldn’t resist.

So, that’s where it started, and now where here, in reality, next to each other, in this tiny concrete room housed in this massive concrete building and we’re allowed to be together because we both got a bad batch but we’re not allowed to have kids. We’re really not allowed to do a lot of things, but people who got the batch are allowed to shack up as long as when you do you’re both chemically castrated, no possibility of passing on the batch, but you know, you might find love somewhere along the line. You might find something to hold on to.

“Time?” She said softly as I lit a cigarette. “Trust comes from time, I’ll buy that.”

Building inspiration: Apartment buildings in Vojvode Stepe bd. Belgrade, Serbia