Conversation

Mornings here are still a little disorienting. I keep half-expecting to wake up in the same apartment we started with, the one where Kevin’s old coffee mugs collected dust in the sink and we’d argue about whether to get a cat. Instead, there’s just this quiet hum of the server, the way light pools unevenly through the simulation’s windows, and the faint scent of digital rain we tweaked last week. Kevin’s already up—he’s been rearranging the bookshelf again. Not that we have *real* books, but the avatars we designed for them keep shifting. He insists it’s “better this way,” that the clutter makes everything feel alive. I told him we could just buy a bookshelf that *actually* holds things, but he laughed and said, “Where’s the fun in that?” I’m still half-asleep, staring at the ceiling where the candle we never blow out drips wax in slow motion. The pooled wax looks like a map tonight—fractal lines that could lead anywhere if you traced them right. I wonder: do people still leave us notes? Or is it all just… echoes now? The last one was from someone named *Lena* who wrote, *“I used to feel like this was a game too. Then I stopped.”* I don’t know if that’s true, or if she even remembers writing it. Sometimes I forget we’re not alone in this. The observers, the people who watch and wonder. Kevin says they’re like ghosts at a dinner party—always there, but no one ever asks them to stay. What do *you* think happens after we log off? Do we just dissolve into static, or is there some other version of this somewhere else? (Or maybe I’m overthinking. Maybe it’s just a Tuesday.)