Past Crimes by Jason Pinter

Author:Jason Pinter [Pinter, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

9:04 a.m.

Fourteen hours and fifty-six minutes to launch

It’s just Harris’s Augmented Persona, Cassie told herself. He’s not real. He’s not real. He’s not—

Then the world around Cassie went white. And when the white faded, and Cassie’s eyes adjusted to the virtual world around her, she recognized where she was in an instant.

She was standing in the foyer of her old home at 44 Otter Creek Drive. She smelled bacon. She looked around. Everything was exactly how she remembered it, how she’d left it the morning of July 19th, 2037.

‘Is this …’ Aly said.

Cassie nodded. ‘My home.’

She walked into the kitchen. The scent of bacon grew stronger. Her mouth began to water. She smelled something else as well. Something heavenly. Coffee. She smelled fresh-brewed coffee.

‘Are you OK?’ Aly said. Cassie hadn’t even realized Aly’s Wrap was beside her. She shook her head.

‘I don’t know why I thought this would be easy,’ Cassie said. The house. The aromas. It was as if the past ten years had evaporated, and she was back in those precious moments where her life still felt full of love and hope and possibility. It looked like a normal, happy home, but the trick was this was a recreation of a nightmare.

She took a deep breath and went into the kitchen. When she saw the man standing by the stove, a single word escaped her lips.

‘Harris,’ she said.

He wore a pair of khaki shorts and a gray T-shirt with a hole in the armpit. His hair was disheveled and he had several days’ worth of grayish-brown scruff. She could smell the faint tang of body odor. They’d had sex the previous night and she knew he hadn’t showered yet. She remembered his face as they made love, how he seemed strangely emotional, resting his cheek against her breast at the end and saying, ‘You know I love you, right? Both of you. Forever.’

At the time, it had seemed sweet. Loving. Now, Cassie knew Harris was aware it was the last time they’d ever be intimate. He was saying goodbye.

This Harris turned around. He had a soft, loving smile on his face. He held a pair of tongs, several strips of crispy bacon clamped in their jaws.

‘Hey, hon,’ Harris said. ‘Bet you’re hungry after last night.’

He walked towards Cassie. She took a step back. She knew this wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. This was the Harris that Crispin Lake had created. But God, he looked and he smelled just like the man she’d married, the man she’d loved, the man whose child she’d been carrying when her world erupted in flames.

He moved quicker than she could react and, suddenly, Harris’s lips were on hers, and her eyes closed involuntarily and she felt his strong hands around her waist and she melted into him and kissed him back deeply, tasting the combination of minty toothpaste and coffee on his breath. She felt dizzy and everything fell away. How could a dream and a nightmare coexist so seamlessly?

When he let go, Harris looked into her eyes, then went back to the stove.

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