The (Uncanny) Valley of the Butterflies

I reach for the carton of milk, unfold the corners, and glug it down. I slide my tongue along the frayed paper sides where I chaotically tore into it yesterday. Was it yesterday?

I sit cross legged on the numbing tile of my unheated apartment, but I am actually fishing on a beach in the South Pacific. My warm, sour breath gives the illusion of a tropical breeze against my forehead. My friend will be meeting me soon in our virtual haven. We’ll be looking up at the clouds together again the way we have for countless weeks.

I have never cared much for the beach, but I’ve found appreciation for the hypnotic sounds of the tide slowly rolling in and out and the pleasant sound of the birds chirping and crooning overhead. I can even pick up sand and admire every unique color and detail without it getting stuck between my fingers.

My place is not a place of dreams. It’s not a place of reality. So going there, I am not under an influence, I am above one. I don’t give up control, I am control. Suspended between light and dark! Dream and reality! The mundane and the extraordinary!

What will I look like? What will I do? Will they like me? I had pondered all the ways in which my life would be transformed as I began my exodus from reality. But over the course of many weeks, these questions tumbled in my mind like a speed dry cycle and I began to wonder if anyone missed me. Had I been thought of? What tragedies had occurred in the world while I disappeared? What pain would re-enter my life the moment I came back? How long had it been now? 

On the last day of classes before winter break Jackie asked if I’d come to home with her for Christmas. Her eyes narrowed and her forehead creased. Pity wasn’t an attractive look on her. She was probably repeating some kind of “act normal” mantra over and over throughout Intro to Italian Literature, or maybe she was just doing some online shopping like she usually does in lecture. Either way, she wasn’t acting normal, how could she? She knew I didn’t have any plans, or any way to cope without him anymore. “I have plans,” I said.

I feel so stiff and so sore from sitting on my bed, so I plop down onto the floor, just a child playing alone with her toy.

Lukas, an international student next door, has been doing as I asked - milk in the refrigerator, granola bars, and peanut butter in an accessible place near my bed. He checks on me once a week, but never disrupts me. He’s from Beijing and he said he understands wanting to escape. I once asked him about the virtual sun there and he seemed embarrassed. I should go outside more. Maybe in the spring, I’ll be ready.

I had decided to go in on the tenth of December. I couldn’t afford a ticket home for the holidays, and anyway, I didn’t want to go. I’d scraped together what was left of my allowance, plus the sympathy money my father had deposited in my account, and finally bought my own VR headset. It was nothing fancy, but it would get the job done. 

In a month or so, I believed I would be born all over again. I decided that if I kept going with life, I might disappear. My virtual hibernation was solely self preservation. I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to be dead, so here I am, a vibrant pixel in the multiverse.  

I spend most of my time in VR chatrooms as my avatar, Ruby. I met my closest friend, possibly my only friend, on the first day of my virtual vacation. His username is a random string of letters and numbers so I have nothing to call him except “friend.” Non-users consider VR Chat as a place for weirdos who can’t socialize on the outside. I believe those who know things often do not speak, and those who speak do not know what they are talking about.

His voice reminds me of the way I remember my brother Jay’s voice. His is so deep that it sometimes distorts the audio in my small speakers. I like the way he doesn’t echo my thoughts, he counters almost everything I say in a way that reminds me he’s really listening.

Here I can sing, joke, design and decide what I want to look like, make friends, create worlds and discover hidden parts, laugh, dance freely, debate, role play, impersonate, learn, exchange ideas, and experience new cultures and languages. I am infinitely capable. 

I exit the South Pacific island and enter a new map, the one we built together. It’s a train station. When friend and I first made it, no one really came. Soon it became chaos, a vibrant community of players coming and going. But we love the chaos in the virtual world. In the real world, I fear strangers talking to me, touching me, breathing on me. In this world, I am invincible, an evolution of human consciousness.

I greet players passing by and ask if any of them have seen my friend, but because I don’t have the random username memorized, they don’t know who I’m talking about. I miss him. This is the longest we’ve been apart.

After some time, I finally see friend slowly stepping off a train car. He approaches me and tells me he’s sorry, but he’s logging off, for good. I cry stale tears and tell him for the first time about my brother Jay and how I feel that losing my twin, truly my other piece of life, is making me disappear. He say I am not disappearing. I am materializing, metamorphosing.

I wish I could hug my virtual friend. Even more than that, I wish I could hold Jay the way I did when we were little. I wish I could have stood in front of that runaway train. 

So I watch the blur of passing cars. I stay on the platform even after my friend flies up into oblivion, and departs from our virtual paradise. I raise my headset from my temples like a queen dethroned and wipe the crystals from my eyes.