The impossibly colored flatlands of the computer program stretched on for what seemed like a virtual eternity. Ever changing bands of bright information streamed along in thin wires across the surface of the world, giving shape and meaning to timeless forms that smoothed and blended at a distance and broke off into a severe horizon where nonexistent dirt met nonexistent sky in this nonexistent world with a line unbelievably flattened and leveled.
It had been many years since Wilson had entered and, indeed, he had aged many years since then. He was now eighty-six of mind, though his virtual look had, in a kind of brilliant and scientific retention, kept the impression of his nineteen year old self with a frighteningly exact memory. His shirt was new and impeccably clean. His jeans held not a fray. The scars of his actual life were forgotten. His history, gone. This was his chosen world.
In life, or what could be referred to otherwise as "real", Wilson was a math student. His days were filled with chalky classrooms clapped clean by old erasers after the equations had been met an dealt with. His nights were made for dutiful study and organized routines. His leisure, when the occasion did present itself, involved much running and much sunshine. His life knew pets. He had a goldfish, once. His mother's name was Mary, and his father worked hard at the plant to pay for his lessons. Time ebbed and flowed in the trees in the highlight of his youth and he was happy.
Wilson stood for some time on the artificial rock in front of a cobalt sky and wondered, for his sense of time was now the appropriate kind of clear that allowed him to remember his old life. He and he breathed and he tried to ignore the misplaced squeaking of the wind as it got the sound of air wrong.
He looked up and continued his work.
Any day now, he thought. Any day.
***
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