‘LITTLE HUMAN’

Lizzie Falvey is an artist and professor from Boston, Massachusetts. Her photographs, videos, ceramics, and monoprints have been shown in galleries across New England. She takes photos on an old Nikon film camera and enjoys capturing images that evoke a sense of the vastness of time and geographical space.

LITTLE HUMAN

The world ended two thousand years ago, yet here I sit with my legs dangling over the edge of it. Davis was right, even a manufactured reality can be fulfilling if the details are convincing. In these final moments, I've realized that life will happen to you whether you ask it to or not.

***

Davis and I met in a Las Vegas casino. Still in my wedding dress from the day before, I woke up on the floor of a bathroom stall. The last thing I remembered was taking a sip of that awful tea and spilling it down my chest in the middle of my wedding ceremony. I called out for Alex, my new wife, that I met a mere 48 hours earlier, but she didn't answer. I shouldn’t have been too surprised she’d abandoned me. That’s what you get for marrying someone you’ve known for less than a week.

The rancid smell of sick filled my nostrils - I'll never forget it, and snapped me out of my mental fog. I needed to find someone who could tell me what had happened. I could worry about Alex later.

"I can help with that," a man said. How long has this guy been here? Is he the reason I’m here? I could only see his bejeweled shoes from underneath the bathroom stall. Every purple rhinestone sparkled in the dim light reflecting off the linoleum floor.

"This is the women's bathroom," I said, trying to feign confidence I didn’t have. There was no way I was going to trust a man comfortable enough to come into the women's bathroom. I wasn’t in a good state, how was I supposed to fight him if he tried to grab me?

"You wished for someone and now I'm here. No need to think me a man trying to take advantage of a poor woman," the voice said. The purple shoe sparkled even more as it started tapping against the floor. I had no choice; this man was the only person who was suspiciously enthusiastic to help me. I stepped outside of the stall to find a tall man who had not only bedazzled purple shoes, but an entire bedazzled purple suit. At least one of us was put together enough to compensate for the other.

"We can fix that, little human," he said. He grabbed my hand and spun me around, carefully inspecting my stained attire. He let out a dissatisfied grunt and turned me to face the mirror.

“Close your eyes and imagine the best version of yourself. Imagine what you'd wear for a day with the girls."

A day with the girls? My social circle was comprised of myself and a few older women from my crochet group. Still, I humored him and imagined myself in what I wore on my first day in Vegas, the day I met Alex.

The man let out a shriek. When I opened my eyes, I saw that I was wearing the exact outfit I’d imagined, and my wedding dress had vanished. Still, my surprise had a bit more decorum; it was only a small gasp. Regardless, it was starkly disproportional to my slipping grasp on reality.

"Crocs and socks?" the man said, his mouth turned down in utter disgust. "That explains why you were proposed to with a Ring Pop."

"How did you know that?" I asked, suddenly self-conscious.

"It was stuck in your hair when I found you. I took the liberty of taking it out before you woke up," he said.

“So, you found me, took a Ring Pop out of my hair then stuck me in here?”

“That’s exactly right! I thought you’d want some privacy when you woke up.”

He stepped out of the bathroom and into a large casino before I had a chance to argue. How was it possible to not have any recollection of being here? I was at a chapel before I woke up. None of this made sense.

"My name is Davis," the man said, stopping in front of a slot machine. He reached out to shake my hand. This guy couldn’t be serious.

"I'm very serious," he said. "Just shake it."

"How do you know what I'm thinking?"

"You'd know if you shook my hand," he said. I grabbed his hand and shook. A mischievous grin spread across his face, then everything froze. The music stopped and the flashing lights froze, painting the room in hot pink. It looked like someone pressed a pause button, only I didn’t get the memo. I pulled my hand back, but he didn’t respond. That’s when I knew it was official – I was losing my mind.

"You're not losing anything," Davis said. The world suddenly returned to normal and he started eyeing the slot machines. "I just needed that to update the code."

"What code?” I was becoming more and more confused with every word that left his mouth. He took a seat in front of one of the many slot machines and motioned for me to sit next to him. As much as I didn’t want to listen, I had no choice. I was in the middle of a casino I’d never been to and had been abandoned by my wife. Davis was the only anchorage to reality that I had right now.

"What do you notice about this casino, little human?" he asked. He looked around the room in awe, like he was seeing it for the first time.

"Why do you keep calling me that? Or is that another question I only get the answer to when I do what you want?"

He nodded like I was finally catching on to what was happening. I looked around the casino and immediately started counting the colors in the tie dye carpet. There were four. Each of them my favorite color. The music was loud, but bearable because it was an instrumental version of my favorite song. Everything was vibrant, but I handled it because it was all based on the things I loved. It was a saccharine fever dream, but I could tell I was missing something. This was a place that should've made me overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion, yet here I was, stable as stone. "It’s just us here," I said. How could I have missed that?

"Bingo," Davis said. "I noticed that many of your anxious memories were just so because you were in a crowd. I thought it best that we start on the right foot, so I didn't fill the place with people. The machines are still moving and the poker chips are still being shifted from invisible player to player, but they're all moving on timers. I wanted to create a realistic ambiance for you. How did I do?"

"You're not making any sense," I said. My eyes shifted to the bar. A cobble shaker danced in the air then tipped itself over to fill a glass. The sight was both horrific and captivating. "You're implying that you built this place to suit me, but that doesn’t make any sense. Even if that were true, why did you do it?”

He had no response, of course. He turned to face the slot machine, and I understood to follow suit. Upon closer inspection, the slot machine didn't look so ordinary. Instead of the usual lucky seven or themed icon, it had symbols of my life. There was a crucifix, the Eiffel Tower, and my wedding dress. If what Davis was saying was true, I had to commend him on his attention to detail.

He looked at me and pointed to the lever. I wasn’t keen to revisit any of these places, but I had a feeling that I was going to get a three-way match no matter what I did.

"I think you mean a hit," Davis said.

I rolled my eyes and pulled down the lever. The images spun so quickly that I lost focus, but I couldn't look away. I leaned in closer, dipping my face into a kaleidoscope of the most crucial memories of my life. I couldn't decide which was a place I could face, for they all held a sliver of poison in their cracks. The images spun faster and faster until, well, they didn't. When they settled, Davis sat across from me at a café in the middle of Paris.

"I was hoping we'd end up here," Davis said. He looked around the street, clearly pleased with our new surroundings. It was spring, and the cool air was refreshing but not overwhelming. Much like the casino, everything was moving, but there were no people here. The air was filled with the soft ensemble of newspapers flowing in the wind and footsteps on concrete.

"Please explain what's going on," I begged.

"You're kind of dead," Davis said.

"What does that mean? I'm either dead or I'm not dead," I said.

"Oh, it's never that simple, little human," he said.

"Is this heaven, then?" I asked, pathetically failing to steady my voice. I deconstructed years ago, so if this was heaven then I’d be faced with an eternity of “I told you so” from my family.

"Not quite, but based on the ancient religions that humanity followed before going extinct, I can imagine that it's pretty close," he said. "You 'died' a very long time ago. You were… suspended in a white light when I found you. I created this world for you, to make you comfortable."

The idea seemed so preposterous that I didn’t even stop to consider that it may be true, even though all the signs pointed to just that. There’s no way the streets of Paris would be empty in the middle of the afternoon. It’s also impossible to teleport the way we just did. I must be in a coma. "Do you realize how absurd this all sounds?"

"I do," he said. "Can you imagine some cappuccinos please? My throat is dry."

His unbothered tone made me wonder if I was the one with the twisted priorities. Regardless, I imagined two cappuccinos and croissants, which instantly appeared on the table. He closed his eyes as he took a sip, clearly enjoying the silence alongside me.

"One more thing before we continue," he said. He walked over to a newsstand and grabbed a random fashion magazine. "You've got to get rid of those Crocs – this is Paris! Pick an outfit from in here and visualize yourself in it.”

I obliged, not because I wanted to, but because I was at his mercy. A blink passed and I was a new woman. My hair stretched down my back, and I had made sure to change into loafers. The relief on Davis' face could be likened to finding out your phone wasn’t cracked after dropping it face down.

"You technically died two thousand years ago," he began. Now it was my turn to be tense. "Most of humanity did. There was a war between countries, I forget what they were called, and it wiped most life from Earth.” He leaned in and lowered his voice, “If I’m being honest, I thought humanity was a myth before I found you on my little weekend trip visiting ancient planets."

"How did I die 2,000 years ago and then appear here? Where is here? And if you're not human then what are you?" I couldn’t stop the questions from coming out of my mouth. I needed a proper explanation now, not more comments of Crocs and cappuccinos.

"You did a tea ceremony at your wedding, yes? I think whatever was in it protected you from the bomb that hit the courthouse moments after you took a sip. You still had the cup in your hand when I found you."

"How could tea possibly protect me from a bomb?" I asked. "If that were true then I shouldn’t be in one piece."

Davis leaned back and crossed his legs as if there was a camera trying to capture his elegance.

"That is a mystery that even I cannot figure out, but I suspect it is safest kept in the past. That kind of power is very dangerous for any species, no matter how evolved they may be."

A black hole opened in my chest as I realized what was going on. I was in the middle of Paris by myself. There was nobody else here. There was nobody else in the casino back in Las Vegas. There was only Davis and I, and I had been the last living human being. I had outlived everyone. I was completely, and utterly, alone. I imagined two glasses of red wine, because I didn’t know how smart it would be to hear the rest of his explanation with a clear mind. I was in desperate need of a clouded head.

Davis took a sip and immediately spat it out, painting the sidewalk in red.

"Don't like it?" I asked. A small laugh escaped from my lips. This was the first time I’d smiled since I woke up.

"It tastes better in theory than in practice," he said while wiping his face with a napkin. Then I noticed that he didn’t handle his body with grace. He moved like a young child who was capable of caring for themselves but didn’t have the fine-tuned motor skills to do so. This body must have been very different from whatever his true form was.

"Where am I really, Davis? You talked about fixing code earlier. Are we in a computer?"

He rocked his head from side to side as emphatically as if I’d just asked if he’d prefer a bedazzled suit in blue. "In theory, you're in the same place you've always been. You're in your head, but with a bit of intervention from me. Everything here is based on your memories and desires. All the people who will eventually appear will be generated from images you’ve seen before. Same goes for all the places. This may not even be what Paris looked like. I built it based on your memory and some research I did. You can also control everything. I've limited some settings for now, like controlling other people and the weather, but when you’re ready, you’ll have full authority.”

Not quite reality, not quite death. This was a small pocket between the two.

“Exactly,” Davis said. “The real world, my world, would be unsettling for you. According to my research, we look similar to your greatest common nuisance – the fruit fly.”

My face twisted up in disgust before I had a moment to consider how offensive it would be, but he just laughed. And he had been right. I had no interest in living in a world of fruit flies. In fact, I had spent one summer hyper fixated on killing them when they infiltrated my kitchen. It was, admittedly, not a great look for a lone traveler benefitting from his kindness.

“Exactly,” he said. “You wouldn’t like our kind, and I don’t know how our kind would feel toward you. Given the time period you’re from, I believe you know that humans don’t respond kindly to things they do not understand.”

I nodded. He was right. Humanity wasn’t known for our table manners with strangers.

“Where is my body now?” I asked.

Davis’ eyes stayed glued to a bike without a rider moving down the street. “Your body didn’t respond well to the air in this atmosphere. It started to decay quickly after you left Earth. I suspect whatever was in that tea only protected you in Earth’s conditions.”

“Where is my body?” I asked, decidedly more demanding this time. My ability to handle the unknown quickly eroded in the little time I’d spent in this world. My world. It’s scary how quickly the power went straight to my head as I grabbed Davis’ face and turned it to face me.

“It does not exist anymore,” he whispered. “I’m not familiar with the ancient medicines for your body, and I was running out of time, so I just transferred your consciousness into this place.”

“And what is this place?”

“A world inside a computer on my bedside table,” he said. I let him go, and he sat back in his chair. The bravado he wore like a necklace started to rust. The adrenaline in my stomach morphed between shock, confusion, and anger. I hadn’t been real this entire time. I wasn’t in a computer - I was a computer.

"Why didn't you let me die? Did you stop to think what it would be like to be the last of my species?" I yelled. Two thousand years of grief rushed through my body, and I understood why he withheld my ability to control the weather.

"I didn't think it'd be fair to let you die. Of all the stories I've heard about humanity, the continuity was your resilience. Your kind always did whatever necessary to survive, even at the detriment of your own. You were a brutal species, but an admirable one." Davis said, his voice shaking as he grappled with the guilt I threw at him. "I shouldn't have been the person to decide the fight was over. It was not my choice to make."

Davis sparkled while he cried. The light reflected off his suit and straight into every emotion passing through me. I tried to untangle them from one another, but they were indistinguishable.

"When will I die in here? How does a mind die?" I asked.

"When you're ready," Davis said. He wiped a tear from his cheek and took another sip of his cappucino, which perked him up. "In theory, you could do it now."

He pulled a television remote out of his pocket and carefully placed it on the table. His finger hovered over the power button.

"When you're ready, push this button. It will ask you multiple times to avoid any fatal mistakes because I won't be able to bring you back once it's done. You're also the only person who can press the button. Nobody else, not even myself, can choose that for you."

I grabbed the remote and inspected it more closely. It was scary to think how much power laid inside that piece of plastic.

"Okay," I conceded, because what else could I do? This was an existential crisis served with red wine, but it was all I had now. Davis sensed my acceptance and stood from the table. I rose with him. I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving. I didn’t want to be alone.

"Don't be scared, little human,” he said. A smile inched across his face, but I could tell he was scared too. I got the sense I was not the only one who was alone. “If you ever need me, just switch to Channel 13."

He started walking down the street, and it slowly filled with other people. I tried to keep up, but he moved much quicker than an average human would.

"And what about when you die? I'm a computer, so I'm bound to outlive you," I said. The realization, along with the growing flocks of people, made me lose grasp of my own breath. More people appeared at a restaurant around the corner. It was a family that looked a lot like my old group of high school friends. In fact, everyone looked eerily familiar, but I couldn’t confidently identify anyone.

"I won't die before you, trust me. Time moves very differently for me out there than for you in here. I built it this way so you'd never be alone," he said. "I'm a compassionate creator, am I not?"

His bravado was back. It looked good on him. I pulled him into a hug and held him close. He was the first and last real visitor I'd ever have. He was gone before I let him go, off to whatever world he came from. A raindrop hit my cheek, then another, then another, mirroring the growing discomfort inside of me. This was real. I was a God. The streets filled with people speaking languages I didn’t understand, so I shut my eyes and imagined myself back home with Alex on my couch. She grabbed my hand and we started dancing in the living room. Although it was all my doing, it was nice to feel chosen a second time.

***

Those were the days when my world was vibrant, but the excitement of utopia quickly dulled. It became grey and manufactured, much like the remote in my hand. Davis hasn't been on Channel 13 in a few hundred years. He would be happy to know that he was right, humanity will destroy itself to retain its grasp on life.

Power button activated. To confirm, press 22-999-33.

Power button activated. To confirm, press 555-444-8-8-555-33.

Power button activated. To confirm, press 44-88-6-2-66.

Confirmed.

Goodbye, little human.

Danielle Roberson is a writer living in Texas. She writes poetry, short stories and is currently working on her first novel.