Anna keyed a command into the computer, pushing me deeper into the room. It was all so domestic, mundane, the girls relaxing like it was just a regular sleepover, while my heart was in my throat, nearly at the point of throwing up with fear. It was surreal, my brain alternating between literal disbelief - unable to accept that this was actually happening - and feeble efforts to protest. Meanwhile, the girls in the room chatted to one another, barely registering my existence.
That things, that Chronivac, was made illegal decades ago. It was a reality warping device of nightmares, the kind of thing you get warned about in the same breath as boogeymen. It wasn't supposed to exist anymore, and yet, there it was, danging off a three hundred dollar laptop with Anna’s name snickered on.
“Okay, so, how about we just got some simple stuff out of the way first? Hayley?”
Hayley was the one with the chronivac itself, having taken over from Anna. The most waifish of the group, she sat on a large bean bag, Laptop sitting in crossed legs. “I wanna tell him.” She said, swigging from a oversized water cantine. “I think it's part of the fun.”
Anna shrugged, looking around the room for a dissenting voice, smiling when there was none. They at last recognised me, sitting closer, my former friend closer than the rest, letting the chatter die down. She averted her gaze, raised her nose, put a hand on her chest, took a breath.
“We are perverts.” She said at last.
Laughter burst into the room. She was blushing red, trying to feebly mask her true emotions with a few preformative laughs, but she was the only one who had to force it. To the rest, this was just a joke, and one of the girls (Layla) even slapped my ass.
"Christ. Oh christ. No. Fuck." I thought. "This was all a joke to them."
“Seriously, seriously." Anna continued "So, we have had the vac for a while, and until yesterday we just used it to make ourselves a little hotter, or to increase our GPA, or to go into video games -you might have liked that!” More laughs, and now I was desperately trying to fight my way free. “But we want to do something new. Basically, we kinda just, want a person. Like, not people, just one, because torturing people is fun!”
I spasmed so hard they saw it, but all it did was induce a giggle.
"Fuck," I thought, trying to scream for help, "for the love of God, no!"
“Well not like, torture-torture. Like if we wanted to hurt you we could just stab you. That's what the video game stuff was like by the way. We would start going on adventures, but it would get boring, so we would just massacre a town. None of it felt as real as this one time we accidentally deleted a real guy.
“So yeah, not that this won't hurt, just we aren't going to stab you or anything, just make your life suck. We can use the vac to look into your interests, and when you asked me out I checked on your stats. I saw that you were - are - just some guy. Like, full on, straight guy. That's borning, you know? But that makes you as a victim more fun? You have - or had - a family that loved you. Haley is finishing up with that now by the way. We just rewrote your last three weeks of life. You died. Mourning is over. You are ours now!”
For emphasis, they turned the monitor in my direction, just as they hit execute. I watched as news articles and security footage if my demise was slowly generated, killing me off while jay walking. Then the footage itself flashed onto the screen, and the girls gave me an unobstructed view. I couldn't look away, watching my body thud off a bonnet, sail through the air, then skid across the ground. I tried to move, but my arms and legs were no longer functioning. I shuddered into a foetal position, and passed with a teary scream.
That wasn't just a death, that was a deliberate painful, unkind end, and they did it. The fear in me only the dead knows, and in that moment everything came undone.