Dani took a deep breath and walking into the room. It was just as she remembered. Hard wooden floor, paneled walls, tightly shut blinds. Light was never allowed in this room, no, that would have disrupted the image. Turning to the door, she passed through it and walked down the stairs, each step a quick staccato.

“Mom?” Dani called. Only silence replied. Shrugging, Dani wandered through the old home. So much life had passed these walls. The mantle in the living room held DPs, digital pixels, moving pictures of times past. Dani watched as the frames flickered with the various images in their hard drives. This one nearest Dani held, well, Dani. The cherubic baby splashed around happily in her baby bath, turning toward the viewer and smiling in that giggly baby way. The next frame held Jen, Dani’s mother, and a man with sand brown hair, David. They were on the Northern Beach, standing next to giant snow man sculpture. The couple held each other and laughed, gazing out at Dani, waving merrily. Smiling, Dani waved back, indulging for a moment. The third frame was older, only have enough memory for one DP. It was of a sturdy, tanned man. His eyes were a sparking hazel. Dani’s smile turned bittersweet as she stared at that familiar face.

“Hello, I’m home!” Dani mother arrived home. Turning from the DPs, Dani walked into the kitchen. Her mother’s back was turned. Evidently, she had just returned from a shopping excursion; there were bags littering the floor and two in her arms.

“Hey,” Dani said, somewhat lamely. The older woman’s eyes widened as her hands flew to her mouth.

“Dani, oh, my little girl!” sigh. Mom always did overreact. “I didn’t know you were going to come over, oh, I would have made something. How have you been, are you going to stay what-” the words were starting to flow together, just as they always did when Jen was excited.

Halting the flow of words, Dani laughed out, “Mom, mom, relax! I’ve only been in this world for five seconds and you immediately try to talk me to death.”

Smiling apologetically, Dani’s mother blurted, “I’m just so happy to see you.”

***

“It’s my life, my reality!” Dani shouted, “After dad - ” the words were choked off as Dani struggled not to be overcome by the crushing weight of her grief. “Lani,” she whispered, almost automatically.

“No!” her mother snarled, “No, he was your father, your father! His name was Lewis!” Dani stood her ground, sadly watching the woman as she tremble there. They had had this discussion many times before.

“I was not RealityXKR’s fault,” Dani spoke slowly, knowing it uselessness of her worlds. Looking at her mother, she was only a stone wall, cold and unforgiving. Probing the wall, she tried to breach this blockade as she had done countless other times.

“La . . . Dad died because he did not make his choice. One mind cannot live in two realities. It ripped him apart.” Smashing against the wall, the words could not reach her mother, trapped behind her stone fortress.

“Lewis died because of that program! They let people in there and just, just leave them to die! It’s deadly. They should destroy it! You know it’s true Dana!”

“I never said it wasn’t Mom. My world is just as dangerous as this one. But look! We, you, everyone who doesn’t transpose, they’re killing this planet! Only the poles are fit for habitation! All that pollution, and the mutations, they’re spreading Mom! I’ve read about when this began. It started the equators, but now look! I mean, people used to live on North America! I saw some of the old digital pics, and, I mean, it was beautiful, but now? Decay, death, and destruction. You know the Muck Pits that cover, like, two fourths of the planet? They used to be water! It’s time to move on. Reality XKR is pure, fresh, and there is no way for us to harm it! It, It’s paradise!”

“That’s because it is not real,” her mother said through gritted teeth, “Men and women of this world built that ‘paradise.’ Sweetheart, it is not real. I know, honey, because there have been thousands of things like this, go here, save the world, it will be just great. They never work, please, listen,” she had become pleading and sad. Looking into her daughter’s eyes, she tried to remember how it felt. Each time a new reality, world, or paradise opened up, Jen had hoped. At first, she had tried and tried to see the good in the worlds. She had invested her heart and soul into the becoming of the new era, had tried to make everything better. And, she had watched as every time they had fallen and come to nothing. Nothing that had driveled through her hands and crushed the very life out of her. After a while, she had seen that, there was no other world. The one in which she had been born was the one she would have to make due with. Jen gave up.

Of course, there was one good thing that had come of all that experimenting with the new realities. Lewis. He was her other half, her soul-mate. Before he had walked into Xanadu573, she had been empty. Looking back, she had been walking around an empty shell. Her life had been nothing but emptiness. The moment she saw Lewis, her life began. They were on fire. Together forever. Those had been their vows, the vows they had repeated in every world they went to when the last one crumbled.
Eventually, Jen had given up. She accepted that a new reality was not the answer. One does not run from a problem. She decided to stick it out with the Earth and make due. Lewis followed her, of course, for the two could not be without one another, but he did not follow completely. He never gave up hope for another utopia world. Slowing down, he pick and chose the worlds he tried, and those few where few and far between. When their daughter had been born, he stopped altogether. Jen thought that they would finally become a family, in the here and now.

That was never to be. Eventually, someone designed another new world. RealityXKR. This one was said to be different, to be everything its predecessors had not been and more. Dana was 18, just old enough to get her transposer’s license. Lewis, now Lani, took Dana with him to the new world. They had come back after three months, regaling her with tales of adventure and glory. Jen had listened good-naturedly, content to wait for the day when the Reality would end, and her family would come back. Again, that was never to be.

One of the new “updates” to RealityXKR was that it was a real reality in every way. One lived, aged, and died in the game. Perhaps that’s why so many were attracted. The ultimate world, if you lose, game over. It was all well and good, until . . . he was gone. Jen knew it was no one’s fault, but the hole in her heart could not be filled. Looking into her daughter’s eyes, she could see the rift that had been growing between the two for past three decades.

“Okay,” Jen whispered, “I will try.”

It took a while for Dani to get the idea that her mother was really going to try it, try RealityXKR. But it would not matter. Jen just could not remember what it was, to be that way again. Youth could never fathom age, and age could not recall.

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