Feb 2018 v01 online

Findlay looked askance, but moved on.
“Good old February. Roll on springtime.”
We exchanged irritating pleasantries, as we
usually did when we bumped into each other
on a Thursday. All the while, the seething wish
I always held in my gut, for everyone, for
Findlay, to rip and tear and maim, was drowned
out by some new welling of dread. It was dread.
It gripped my throat and shook my words.
What was wrong with me?
I offer Findlay a ride to work, keep him out of
the cold. It's on my way, I said.
The whine of the terminated simulation
caught Daniel by surprise, and instilled in him
a tiny prick of fear.
What the hell?
He abandoned his keyboard and stood to
look at the scrolling lines of data in one of the
top screens. No diagnostics, no issues –
obviously there was a malfunction, there had to
be, but it wasn’t something that the simulator
computer could define.
I took him to the back of the café where I had
parked, scanned for people, and then slowly
opened the back door of my car.
“Whoa, whoa,” He said, feigning offense.
“You're no chauffer. I’ll sit in the front with
you.”
“Ha,” I said, perplexed. “Of course.”
I got in the driver’s seat next to him and
drove. I drove him to work. It was not on my
way. He asked what the half brick in the
backseat of my car was for. I told him,
truthfully, that I didn’t know.
Everything felt off, like I’d missed a beat, or
the world had skipped a revolution, or
everything had moved half a foot to the left. I
spent the morning feeling like I was watching
myself from a distance, watching the simulator.
Everything was wrong. At lunch, I drove to a
disused building deeper into the industrial
district in which my workplace was nestled.
Getting out of the car, I took the half brick in
my hand, hefted it, and burst into tears. What
the hell am I doing here? What the hell am I doing?
What the hell –
***
Could someone be interfering with the
running of the simulator computer? The
thought gripped his throat like a fist. Of course,
the whole business ran on the most heavily
encoded private network known to society, but
interaction between computers or agents within
the business was a possibility. If someone was
watching Daniel’s activities, fiddling with them,