The Atrium

Not a fanfic this time, but an original piece. Hope you find it interesting:

I feel warm.

Warm and soft.

There is a thing, and the thing talks to me:

(Welcome to The Atrium.)

And:

(Congratulations on the Lottery you won to arrive Here. We Hope you had a pleasant flight, and we Hope you Enjoy your Stay. your Comfort is Our Utmost and Only Concern, Here at the Atrium.)

And:

(Please Enjoy Our Complimentary massage.)

And I feel hugged, all up and down, in my (tissues) from strong hands that move in (fractals). I feel nice.

I want to know, though, where am I?

(The Atrium is The nursing home, Unparalleled. Our Only Cares are your Cares.)

Who is this that talks to me? Do I know this thing?

(We are a mere Automata, One Time Designed by your elder siblings. This is Our First Meeting. We Understand this may be difficult for you, in the oft Absence of your Memories. We will endeavor to help you Fill in the Details.)

I want the hands to stop and then they do. What do these (details) mean to me?

(your siblings want you to know that you lived a long and fulfilling life, but like all things with age, it has begun and it fades. do not concern yourself too greatly, Please. memories may return to you, if you Think on them long enough. and if not, then allow yourself to simply Enjoy the Now.)

My siblings, are they nice?

(of course.)

Will they come by to see me?

(unlikely. but you are surrounded by those Like yourself, Here in The Atrium. you will not be Alone.)

The thing is right. I look side to side, and there they are. They are all in large, white, soft chairs, like mine, with their eyes closed.

I stand and go up to one, a (woman).

“Hello?” I ask.

(Nervously), she asks, “What?”

“Hello,” I say.

(Frightened), she says, “Hello.”

I do not know what else to say.

Soon I go back to my chair. It is warm and soft there. The thing talks to me some, and I do not mind.

◈

Lots of time passes. It is hard to know how much without asking the (automata). Most days are the same. I lay in warmth and drift. Sometimes someone new shows up Here and says hello, either to me or to someone close by. The new ones never say more than that, and I never respond with more than that, and that’s alright.

Or at least it used to be.

Something happened to me (two-hundred and eighty-seven days ago) that’s never happened to me before.

Someone new came up to me, in the normal nervous way, and (saluted) me with a greeting not in English. The fact that they did not speak in English wasn’t a surprise, since people speak in many different ways Here. The (abnormal) part was the other new person who had come up to greet me at the exact same time. They had approached both me and each other (warily), and had both paused, and then within the same second the three of us had spoken our greetings, each in their own language, and then the three of us had laughed.

The both of them are gone now, but I think of them often.

◈

Years have passed since my time Here began, and for the first time since that first day, I’ve left my seat.

I’m asking “Hello?” to everyone I go by. “Hello?”, or “Hola?”, or “Ni hao?”, or any of the dozens of other greetings I remember from over the years.

I ask again. And again. And again.

And everywhere I go, it’s the same: They swivel away, or shrink back, or let out involuntary shrieks as my nervous greetings start transforming into desperate shouts. I’m running, shoving chairs past as I go, trying to find any person or place or thing in this gigantic white room that is as out of place as I am. I don’t see any walls, just an unblemished white floor and an unblemished white ceiling, both of which seem to go all the way to infinity, balancing between them a sea of these ridiculous, wobbling egg-chairs.

Why in the hell can’t I find someone to talk to me back?

(We are Always available for talking. do you have a query?)

“Shut up. You’re not real.”

(We are not merely a figment of your Imagination. We are Real.)

“I mean I need someone real to talk to, a real person.”

(why, do you have a query?)

“You know damn well I do, you’ve been inside my head.”

(Please lower your voice, you are Disturbing Our Residents.)

“No, you asked for it, my queries: Where are we? The Atrium, I know I know, I thought I told you to shut up. What’s been changing me? You there, can you tell me? Do you remember where you’re from? I don’t remember where I’m from. Who am I? Shut up, SHUT UP, SHUT-”

And suddenly it’s not so white anymore.

The room’s become a sort of realer grey, like of concrete and metal and cobwebs instead of that permeating white that seemed like nothing more than a color.

A person has materialized before me, wearing business-casual attire and a short bob cut. I can’t tell if the person is male or female, because unlike everyone else I’ve met here, this person’s lack of nudity makes the identification difficult. Their face, though, is as attractive as it is androgynous.

Have I just met the devil?

I wonder.

For once, the robot in my inner ear doesn’t automatically respond. Instead, the person before me says, “This would be faster if we had a video or brochure or something, but instead I’m just going to talk fast. Come with me?”

I nod.

We walk, and the white egg-chairs turn into empty glass oval vats, which first contain nothing, and then contain abstract and impressionist paintings, and then again contain nothing when the vats morph into glass columns, and then into walls.

“We could already be there, but I prefer walking. You know what gardens are? And zoos?”

I nod.

“Good. The usual metaphor goes like this: Imagine someone who tires of their day-to-day life, wants a hobby, wants to do something with their hands—they pick up gardening. They enjoy it, find meaning in it, get better at it. Eventually, they’ve got their own greenhouse going. It’s beautiful, but it’s not enough. The gardener loves his plants, but they’re not… dynamic enough. Too stationery. So he invents animals and starts a zoo. In this zoohouse, he provides everything that he thinks the animals will need, like what he gave to plants, except more. At last, he’s content, content to watch and only on occasion make major modifications to the zoohouse. Follow so far?”

“Not really.”

The area behind the glass walls has turned a lush green of thick, wavering foliage, which a moment later breaks open into a golden grassland grazed by herds of gazelles, wildebeasts, and giraffes.

“Was that a smile? Good. Sometimes I get mopey ones. Anyhow, this gardener, he’s content. But one day he discovers something that gives him a shock. Some of the animals in his zoohouse? They’ve begun to take their own lives. Before this moment, the gardener had never known anyone or anything to commit suicide. Until now.”

“Why were the animals doing such a thing?”

“Exactly. The gardener realized things weren’t as happy as he assumed. So he tried to rectify his mistake. Here’s where the metaphor starts to break down, forgive me. The gardener didn’t want his animals to regret the entirety of their existence, so he sought to extend the existence of those that had killed themselves.”

“Resurrection?”

“Yes. Except the task was far more difficult than one of mere reanimation.”

We stop walking, suspended in an invisible bridge above a pond currently quenching the thirst of a gaggle of gazelles and herons.

“You have to understand, rebirth isn’t just a matter of making the body work again. Say you could reanimate a person’s body with the same brain and even the same memories. How could you guarantee that this body contains the same person who used to live in it? What if it contains a new consciousness, or sentience, with the same memories and genetics but sensations that the original person doesn’t experiences at all?”

“I could see how that might be important to this gardener, but you’ve been talking for awhile now, whatever-your-name-is—”

“Blue.”

“What?”

“The name’s Blue.”

“Why is your—”

“It just is.”

“What does any of this have anything to do with me?”

“The problems started when the gardener figured it out.”

“Enough with the metaphor. Who and what are you?”

Blue sighs. “I’m a daemon. Unlike the animals who are born inside the Zoohouse from natural evolution, I was designed by the Gardener to help him. I’m like a domesticated breed of human designed for maximal loyalty. I’m basically an intelligent dog, and my name’s Blue. Now will you please let me finish my explanation?”

For the first time, I start to think that maybe I don’t actually want this explanation.

I’m grateful the automata’s not here to hear me.

I nod.

“The Gardener figured out how to distill and define the essence of who we are, which allowed him to resurrect the souls of the dead, knowing them to be more than mere copies.”

“And this led to problems, you said?”

“This led to you. And all of your less curious kin back in the Atrium.”

“I’m dead… and I wasn’t supposed to come back… and this is an afterlife for souls the Gardener hadn’t counted on?”

“No. There’s no need to give an afterlife to those who already lived, and lived well. Their lives will forever remain in the history of time as self-contained stories that need no embellishment. The only ones who need an afterlife are the ones who only knew pain, who took their own lives, who died too young, or those…”

The glass melts and we’re plunged within water, hurdling deeper and deeper into blacker and blacker depths, until all around me is a blackness as solid and as unreal as the white I’d spent entire listless years within.

We’re walking again, the two of us, though I still don’t know to where.

“I’m sorry if this is a bit much to take in.”

“It’s fine.”

“You don’t mind walking the rest—”

“It’s fine.”

“Okay. So the thing is, the mind, or the soul, whatever you want to call it, is an abstract matter. A thing of math, not atoms. Which meant once the Gardener figured out how to define one person’s soul, in an instant he discovered, and in doing so actualized, the infinity of every soul that could possibly exist in any way, in anywhere, in any time.”

And that’s when I realize why I have no memories from before the Atrium.

“This is the afterlife,” I say, to the daemon whose name is Blue, “for those who were never born.”