He still remembered her face. It was burned into his memory, her eyes, the slanted, mischievous grin. He sometimes wondered if had all just been down to bad timing. He was lonely, wasn’t thinking straight. If he’d met her at any other time he would have walked away immediately.

But he hadn’t. He’d strung along, planning, conspiring, wrapping himself tighter and tighter in her net, until when it came time to break free, to finally sever the bonds holding them all back, he’d hesitated. Out of fear.

“Fear is the child’s bedfellow.”

Who had said that anyway? He couldn’t remember. Just another quote drifting around in his head, popping up from the soup now and then.

What had he been afraid of? Losing it all? Death?

Awareness of death is what differentiated man from the animals, right back to biblical times. Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge. What did it teach them other than the fact of their own mortality?

And then Freud, that other great religious figure, what did he say? That man defeats his own death instinct by killing others. No wonder so much out there had become what it had. Glorified arenas, dark, twisting streets curving away from the Boulevard, all the better to hunt in. Even the Boulevard itself, even it had become part of the great game they all seemed to want to play. Fuck it, good luck to them.

The bourbon still burned, it never stopped burning. He could adjust it, but would that ruin the whole effect? You had to be careful in this place, perched between the two worlds. Once done things weren’t so easily fixed.

“Luck is when the guy next to you gets hit by the arrow.” He knew that one. That was Aristotle. Man’s basic narcissism, complete absorption with self. Games with death are ok because it will never happen to me, not in any conscious part of my brain. The unconscious can feed off the fear and breed excitement.

So we had this. A dark, wet playground. Not even that. A classroom perhaps. They had even introduced a teacher.

It wasn’t worth feeling guilty about. No, only the Separation was worth that. The ripping away of users from their dreams, the amputation of fantasy, leaving both sides floating free like a kite snapped and ripping in the wind. Knowing it was necessary didn’t make it any easier to deal with.

He’d done it to himself too of course. He could have exempted himself, it would have been easy, but he knew he had to follow through. Had to live with the consequences of his actions. No good holding others up to high ideals and then failing to do so yourself.

And now he found himself here on the edge, surrounded on both sides by empty shells. You could see it in every eye you bothered to look into.

Is death really the main, overriding fear in life? Perhaps it’s loneliness.

Every now and then he could drop in for a visit couldn’t he? See how things were. He wouldn’t intervene, just watch. Maybe his presence itself would be enough.

Just for a moment, a second, just to feel it again, just to see through those eyes.

Adlai stared up at the window and felt his eyes glaze over as the code ran through his head.

He wasn’t far away, which was surprising. Off Grid, away from the bright lights. Somewhere familiar, from the past. Very familiar. Somewhere dangerous.

Adlai opened his eyes.