Silver rubbed hard at her left eye, as the Sandman threatened to close it. He’d already tackled Walker, as he was snoring gently in bed, arms around a pillow in lieu of her warm body. It was three a.m., and she had awoken like a woman possessed. The coding was clear in her mind, like the coding for the finding spell she did a few days ago. It was so simple.
Her fingers danced across the keys, programming flowing from her mind directly to the keys. She didn’t dare go into the Net, as she didn’t want to get lost in time. She worked in the dark, the keys and mouse illuminated, the only light coming from the white of the monitor as she wrote in Java, creating the invocation. She still had the chip CAL had given her, having not passed it to Walker yet, and she didn’t want him to wake up worried.
Mobius kept on trying, so she decided to fight him by getting up and getting an AMP out of the fridge. The light from the small refrigerator shined for a moment on Walker. She turned to look at him, and her heart swelled just by looking at him. His black hair tousled from the pillow, his strong arms wrapped securely around the pillow. The sheet covered the rest of him, but she knew it by heart: thick cords of muscle for his legs, but not so much as a body builder which was perfect in her eyes. Fine black hair all over him, leading to his center, something she would worship until the end of her days.
She closed the fridge but his image remained burned in her eyes, her memory. His words, as they lay together, just talking, “I promise to take care of you when you’re sick, to share my thoughts and feelings with you, good and bad, for the rest of our life together. From now on, I see us as one life.”
She didn’t know what to say. Even before she was brought into VR, she was never a romantic, and prided herself on memorizing “Tyger, Tyger” as opposed to the stupid Shakespearean sonnets. She hated Romeo and Juliet, never thinking that she would never have a true love like that. Romeo and Juliet were kids. They were stupid. She was 28, though she had lost five physical years in the Net, so she looked around 25. Heck, Walker had been around the block a few times, and had probably fallen in love too – he admitted to loving that half-dragon who died and got better. But she felt deep in her heart that it was nothing like this.
She mentioned soulmates, and admitted her diversion with CAL from his vision of the afterlife. CAL did not think there was one. He was of the anthropological bent, that the reason people created the afterlife was to explain why bad things happened to good people, to offer to people that there was a reason to be good, a reward more than just what was before them, since the real world didn’t offer many rewards to people.
Silver believed in reincarnation. Yes, Walker was over five hundred years old, and her soul had been through many incarnations before she met him. But she was of the firm belief that she had loved Walker before, and they both had to walk alone for a reason. Maybe to learn what true love really was, when their paths crossed again.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, staring at his form in the bed, the AMP still in her hand. Mobius had his way with her at that moment, distracting her. She popped open the can quietly, and went back to the desk, then sat in front of the computer.
Carry me with your wings,
Truest, dearest love.
Take me in your arms,
Show me again what love can be.
Your breath upon my skin,
Your heart against mine,
Your lips upon mine,
Mere expressions,
Outward devotions –
My heart soars with yours,
In joy and rapture,
Beyond what we see and touch,
Deeper, into our very being.
We fly together as one,
In the eyes of the Gods.
She stared at the words on the screen. Was this part of the coding, or something else? She put her hand to her mouth in indecision. She glanced back at the form on the bed, then turned back to the words. She wrapped coding around it, and continued.
She went at it for another hour, Mobius finally giving up on her, as the sunrise began to peek in the window. Her stomach growled, betraying her lack of a meal the day before. She put the finishing touches on the programming, and then saved it to the hard drive, and a copy onto a flash drive. She took the drive, and then disassembled it, pulling out the tiny chip. She went to her the boots she used for heroing – big, clunky things – and cut a hole in the top. She dropped the chip inside.
She put on both boots, knowing she looked really silly naked except for the boots. She hoped Walker wouldn’t see this. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought in binary, I soar. The boots floated her a couple of inches off the ground. Higher. They pushed her up a little higher. She was excited, and then she concentrated, HIGHER! She went up sharply, slamming head-first into the ceiling. Her concentration gone, she fell hard to the floor with an undignified thump.
Walker was already bolt upright when she hit the ceiling and had tried to catch her when she fell. She blinked her eyes to focus on Walker’s concerned face. “What were you doing?”
“I wanted to fly.”
He looked at the boots, then smiled and gathered her in his arms. “I’ll teach you.”
We fly together as one, in the eyes of the Gods.
Words: 990
Music: Time for me to Fly – REO Speedwagon (ignore the lyrics, just the melody)
Comments: Silver wanted to learn how to fly.