Elysium Read online

  Except where would I start? How could I cherry-pick through years of memories and figure out the highlights of our relationship? How could I convey to a perfect stranger who Kevin really was? He’d meant everything to me, but was that too much or not nearly enough for someone else to conjure him from scratch?

  I flipped through the forms I needed to fill out. The packets themselves were thicker than the unfinished college applications collecting dust in the other room, and the sheer number of questions overwhelmed me. The written work seemed more straightforward and less emotionally taxing, so I tackled that first.

  The questionnaire started off simple enough. How tall was the decedent? How would I describe his build? Did he have any distinguishing characteristics—birthmarks, scars, or tattoos?

  Then the prompts became more complex, and I had to remember details I hadn’t thought about in years. What kinds of soap, deodorant, and aftershave had Kevin used? What had been his favorite article of clothing? Had I considered him outgoing or withdrawn? Authoritative or passive? Had he sought out touch and human contact, or had he preferred to keep to himself?

  Some of the questions left enough space for an entire essay, and those seemed to focus more on me. Where and how had we met? What sort of activities had we liked to do together? What were my top three memories of our relationship?

  The pen flowed across each line. I plowed straight through the whole stack of paperwork, only taking a break to scarf down a container of yogurt while standing over the kitchen sink. By the time I’d reached the last page, the clock flashed eleven. As much as I wanted to keep organizing all the information I needed to send to Elysium, I didn’t want to yawn my way through the next shift at the shop.

  ***

  The following day, I got right back to work as soon as I got home. Next on the list: going through pictures and videos. A big portion of what I possessed existed in digital form, so I turned the laptop back on to document what I had and select the best representation of our relationship.

  Right after Kevin’s murder, I’d perused the pictures for hours on end. I don’t know what had hurt more, reliving all the happy memories in the face of what happened, or looking away and realizing I was alone and I’d never be the woman in the photographs again. Allowing a momentary indulgence, I scrolled through them slowly before making a list of which pictures and short clips I wanted to send.

  After sliding the computer onto the bed, I crossed the room to the closet. Tucked away on the top shelf sat a shoebox filled with assorted junk: movie ticket stubs, greeting cards, and other items I doubt he’d even known I’d kept. Plopping onto the carpet, I lifted the lid to sort through the contents. I didn’t plan on including all of this in whatever I wound up mailing, just some of the photographs scattered throughout. Since I was drowning in nostalgia anyway, I devoted time to each individual piece.

  When I opened up an old birthday card and saw Kevin’s messy handwriting, his voice rang in my ears. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine his reaction if he found me sitting amidst all the clutter. Hey, kitten, he’d say. What are you up to?

  Not much, I’d respond. Going through some old papers and remembering some of the fun we had.

  He’d peer past me into the box. Even years later, the sound of his laughter remained etched into my soul. You kept all that crap? he’d ask in disbelief. Aww, kitten! If I’d known you’d be saving these for the rest of your life, I would have written more than two lines.

  At least you remembered to get me a card without any reminders! I’d act indignant, but we’d both be laughing soon enough.

  The furniture would shake when he dropped down onto the floor next to me. He’d probably pretend to be all deep and philosophical, but his smirk had always given him away. Why spend so much time going through all this old stuff? We should be thinking about the good times we’ll have in the future instead.

  I don’t think he’d ever spoken those precise words, yet I heard them nonetheless. I wanted to believe I’d moved forward, but some days I woke up with the pain as raw as when his sergeant had come to the door to deliver the bad news. I’d followed all the suggestions, done and said all the right things….

  Elysium might be the last chance I had to finally find some peace.

  A fresh wave of grief washed over me and I rubbed my temples. We might have been young when we married, we might not have been completely ready, but Kevin and I had planned to figure out our dreams together. I’d wanted to go back to school, Kevin would’ve eventually taken the sergeant’s exam, and we were going to save to buy a house and raise a family. Anything in the world we wanted had lain at our feet as we took our vows, but then I was left with nothing except shards of an impossible future.

  The materials formed tidy stacks at the foot of the bed by the time I changed into pajamas. I felt confident this Drew Monroe, or whoever received the information, would appreciate these efforts and attention to detail. The letter stated it should take about a month to prepare for the date, and I already grew impatient. But I’d been waiting for two years to see Kevin again. A month was nothing.

  Drew

  Well, shit.

  April Patterson was a lot younger than I’d expected. I mean, people of all ages, and backgrounds, and circumstances came to me, so I didn’t know why the first picture I saw of her with her husband took me by surprise. Usually clients who’d lost their spouses were a bit older. They’d had more time together.

  As I sorted through the pictures and saw the glowing smiles on the Pattersons’ faces, I was struck by how truly unfair it was that this man, right around my age, no longer lived, and his wife had so many years ahead of her to think of him. To sum it up using a crude phrase from college, wasn’t that a kick in the nuts.

  I was usually organized when it came to planning clients’ visits to Elysium, but when faced with the large amount of information Madame Eve emailed me for April’s date, the matter of where to begin eluded me. I should have focused on programming her dead husband, yet April kept drawing my attention toward her. Something had set her apart from other customers since the very beginning, when I’d made this deal.

  I studied a candid shot from the file of pictures. They seemed to be at some sort of picnic or barbecue, with other attendees drifting through the background. The sun illuminated April’s coppery hair, surrounding her in a golden aura. Her hand jutted up, palm facing out as if to block the camera from capturing her, but she hadn’t quite succeeded. Laughter lit up her face, wrinkling her nose and scrunching the freckles dotting her cheeks. It offered a stark contrast to the prim, shy smile upon her face in the more posed photographs. I liked this one better, and I bet her husband had, too.

  As I stared at the happy woman in the picture, my heart hurt even more for her, for them. I sat at the workstation in the office at Elysium and tried to clear my head. Setting. I needed a setting, the perfect location for romance. Amidst the scanned handwritten forms lay tales of first dates, memorable moments, a roadmap of how the couple had fallen in love.

  I perused a brief description of how, early on, the Pattersons went to a local park and wandered around and talked for hours. Not only would that scene evoke pleasant feelings—I hoped—but designing it would give me a chance to stretch my programming capabilities.

  Most clients weren’t concerned with where their meetings took place. They longed to see the familiar face that haunted them and carry on a conversation with it. As such, I devoted more energy to the likeness of the deceased. But if April’s appointment was going to be a real date for her, I wanted the backdrop I created to give the illusion of a limitless world ripe with the promises of exhilarating possibilities, much like the beginning of a new relationship. I wielded the power to build a universe free of worry and anguish, and I aspired to give it to her.

  And so I embarked on my craft. If I were an artist, the simulations formed the palette. I selected the perfect shades of green for the grasses lining the cobblestone paths, making sure a gentle breeze came along ev
ery now and then to give them a light ruffle. Patches of vivid wildflowers cascaded toward a sparkling stream. If April chose to dip her hand into the water, she’d find it cool, yet not uncomfortably cold as the current bubbled past her fingers.

  No detail went untouched. I located clips of chirping birds and arranged them into a loop that sounded random and natural. The subtle scent of the flowers would occasionally waft to April’s nose. Every visual texture, every tactile object, would come to life for her and respond to her actions.

  Days passed. I kept an old bed in one of the back rooms of the building because I knew well enough how work consumed me. Somewhere, a balance existed between tending to scheduled clients and focusing on April’s project.

  I popped back home to shower when I remembered, and I tried to remind myself to eat on a regular basis. When fatigue overtook me, I crashed onto the lumpy mattress and drifted off to sleep with a combination of satisfaction with the day’s accomplishments and the drive to make them even better the next morning. Though I hadn’t met her yet, April’s presence always lingered near me.

  I refused to take a break at the completion of the virtual park and forged ahead to the next step of the project. It was time to program Kevin. Whenever I needed to check his appearance for a reference, April stood right beside him. If not turned toward the camera herself, she gazed at him with love in her eyes.

  Burying my face in my hands, I let out a loud groan. I must have been at this job for too long because, absurd as it sounded, I found myself jealous of a dead man. Although I had more than Kevin had, he’d had her. And I clearly saw how she cared for him, so much she was still devoted to him years later. Not to mention she looked really pretty and….

  Too bad Madame Eve hadn’t set us up together.

  I jumped up, nearly knocking over the chair. Fresh air, I needed some fresh air. Stumbling through the corridors, I made my way to the front door and burst outside. The sun had just set and a chill lingered in the remnants of dusk. I gulped it in, breathing heavily, and leaned against the brick wall. The idea of going for a run, at least around the block, flitted through me, but I didn’t think my shaken body could have handled it.

  Something had to give. Something had to change. I loved Elysium, my life’s passion, but sometimes it became too much for me. If I expected the company to have a future, I needed to re-examine its structure and find a way to prevent the business of death from killing me.

  But not yet. I had to finish this one project before allowing anything else. April would arrive in a week, and she was counting on me.

  April

  Throughout the partial shift at the sandwich shop, I couldn’t stop fidgeting like a little girl the day before her birthday party. Although I’d considered taking the whole day off, West Hartford wasn’t a bad drive from home and I welcomed the distraction anyway. I was going to see Kevin again.

  As soon as I’d finished ringing up the last customer, I clocked out and popped into the back room to hang up my apron. The confirmation email from Madame Eve suggested I wear something comfortable, so I changed into jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Once dressed, I said good-bye to all the remaining coworkers and headed out to the car.

  The sun shone through a few puffy clouds, and I got on the road early enough to avoid any heavy traffic. Lowering the windows to let in a little breeze, I fiddled with the radio controls. The passenger seat was conspicuously empty and I realized the trip would be the farthest I’d gone on my own since losing Kevin.

  For once, the GPS made no mistakes, and I reached the destination with time to spare. A low brick building sat on a street between the commercial areas of West Hartford and the more residential neighborhoods. I pulled into one of several parking spaces out front beside the one other vehicle in the lot.

  I hesitated in the car and tried to prepare for what awaited me. After dreaming of this day for so long, I wanted to make sure everything went perfectly. It wouldn’t really be Kevin in there, of course, just a highly advanced simulation. But I had so much I needed to say and do to finally have a shot at some sort of closure, anxiety rattled me as if I were going on a real date.

  I didn’t know how long the appointment was supposed to last. Nonetheless, I’d have the opportunity to tell Kevin how much I loved him and missed him. From what I’d read about Elysium in the past month, I expected those sentiments to echo in his voice.

  When enough time had passed, I took a deep breath and grabbed my purse from the passenger seat. Finding the door to the building locked, I pushed the button embedded into the adjacent wall. In a few seconds, a buzzer sounded and the mechanism clicked.

  I entered a sparsely furnished room with a desk and a couple chairs scattered about. It reminded me of a waiting room in a doctor’s office, but no one else occupied the space. For a brief moment I panicked, wondering what I’d gotten myself into and wishing I’d told Janie exactly where I was going.

  Before I could sit, a man hurried out from a hallway opposite the front door. He stopped short when he saw me, and his cheeks flushed.

  “Hi,” he said softly. “You must be April Patterson.”

  I shifted the bag on my shoulder. “That’s me.” I studied the stranger who’d greeted me. Tall and lanky, he didn’t appear completely comfortable in his professional attire of a buttoned shirt and necktie. Messy blond hair tumbled over his forehead, falling into big brown eyes. Standard computer geek, I mused, but kind of cute. At least I thought he was cute. It had been a while since I’d thought that about any man.

  “Are you Drew Monroe?”

  He nodded and smiled. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

  Drew

  I’d spent the day running all tests for the last time to ensure everything was perfect. The long hours of monotony spent in a desk chair staring at glowing screens were all erased when I finally met April. She looked a little different than her pictures, as did most clients. Grief had diminished some of the sparkle in her eyes, and the angles of her chin and jaw were more severe. Regardless, I still found her incredibly beautiful and had to make an effort not to trip over my tongue when I made an introduction. As much as I had anticipated that moment, I wouldn’t fool myself into believing she was there for me.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  She glanced around the room. “You do seem a little short-staffed today.”

  “It’s always like this.” I kicked at the leg of one of the chairs. “I’m the only one here running things.”

  Her head tilted to the side. “Really? This seems like a lot for one person to manage.”

  “Sometimes.” I stepped back and gestured down the hallway. “If you’d like to get started, Ms. Patterson, we can—”

  “It’s Mrs. Patterson,” she snapped. Steel-gray eyes glared at me, and her fingers tightened on the strap of her purse.

  “Mrs. Patterson. Sorry.”

  Her expression softened. “It’s okay.” She sighed and her grip relaxed. “Why don’t you call me April?”

  “Whatever you’d like.” I offered what I hoped was a friendly, reassuring smile. “And you can call me Drew.”

  “All right.”

  I took another step toward the back of the foyer. “If you’re ready, I’ll show you where you’ll be during this whole process.”

  April followed me, not saying anything on our way to the simulation room. I pushed the door open, and she peeked inside. “Sorry that resembles a dentist’s chair,” I tried to joke. “But I wanted something where visitors can recline and try to relax, yet not too hard to get in and out of. A lot of clients are a bit older than you.”

  “I can imagine.” She remained in the hallway. “That’s it?”

  “Well, you’ll be sitting in there. Once you’re all set up, I’ll be right next door.”

  She still didn’t move. It wasn’t unusual for someone to be nervous, so I let go of the door and it swung shut, closing off the view of the simulation room. “Would you like to see my station?” />
  “Okay.”

  I led her to it and ushered her inside. “See, I’ll be watching and monitoring you the whole time.” I indicated the window on the shared wall. “And these screens will show me everything you’re seeing and experiencing.”

  “I understand.” She inched closer to the desk and peered at the equipment. “I did a little research before coming here, though I’m not very good with computers and all that stuff. But I was wondering how you got involved with all this? Besides Elysium, I didn’t find anyone else who does what you do.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and gave her the short answer. “I wanted to help people.”

  April raised an eyebrow. “That’s an admirable statement, but it’s still a curious path you’ve taken to get there.”

  “True, true.” I chuckled and leaned against the edge of the desk. When I nudged the chair out from beneath it for her and patted the armrest, she took a seat. “I was always interested in programming and designing. Like so many teenage boys, I thought I’d spend life in a dream job developing the video games I stayed up all night playing.”

  A small smile finally appeared on her lips and I got a better glimpse at the woman from the pictures. She really was the prettiest woman ever to walk through Elysium’s doors.

  “Don’t worry, I outgrew some of that,” I continued, trying not to stare at her. “I eventually decided I wanted to do something a bit more…significant with those talents, but I wasn’t sure what.”

  April turned toward the monitors and panels again. “But why this?”

  “It’s what I was good at.” I scratched the back of my head. “Don’t laugh, but I get lightheaded at the sight of blood, so I knew I couldn’t be a doctor or anything like that.” The next words hung heavy in the air when I mumbled them. “Or a police officer.”

  Her gaze dropped to the floor and she fiddled with the zipper of her handbag.