Meeting in Real Time

His journey of four thousand miles began with snow on the ground and more falling from a cloudy sky on Saint David’s Day in North Wales. The bulky black cab that would not have been out of place in London had a Welsh driver so the journey, though expensive, provided excellent conversation. This felt like a better sendoff than having to stay in Manchester overnight and risk not getting to the airport in time for any number of reasons.

He felt convinced that he was taking the weather with him on the first of March because Philadelphia, too, after an uneventful flight was covered in white, though he knew quite well that storms usually travelled in the other direction across the grey Atlantic Ocean.

American accents filled the coach, but rather than listen to bits of other people’s lives, he stared out the window. Wrapping himself in memories of a hot air balloon ride that never happened, he predicted how strange it would be to meet her in real time, to talk like normal people, maybe to hold her close if she wasn’t too weirded out by meeting him face-to-face. He had done this before with other virtual friends, all of them university students like himself, but not with anyone half as important, not spending seven hours travelling across an entire ocean.

Getting lost in virtuality with the bare medium of golden words on a black computer screen, creating landscapes and shadowy images of himself had already half drowned his ambition to earn a degree. The Harp (a Welsh pub), the Rose Garden, the Dragon’s Lair, and the Hot Air Balloon, plus all they contained and the maze of other virtual rooms they led to all took up space on the server or possibly servers dedicated to Lambda Moo.

This was a Palo Alto Parc Xerox experiment in multi-user communication which many other students visited as often as they could. The never spoken worry that it could be unplugged without a moment’s notice made it all the more alluring.

Addicted? Yes, of course, as it was so much easier than real life could ever be. He realised this before catching a lift at almost midnight from a postgrad friend who, during the five-mile ride, twisted his melon by implying that this was another virtual journey and how wonderfully real everything seemed when it, too, was merely words on a screen.

And if she didn’t meet his coach? Or if, in some outrageous way, she wasn’t her? If she turned out to be some big jocular fellow who punched his arm and laughed, not caring that his heart burst into piercing slivers that shattered when they hit the ground?

Silverwings. He whispered her virtual name in the echoing cavern of his mind as if that would be enough avert this catastrophe like a spell chanted by the magical character he sometimes played.

The landlord of the Harp was so much closer to his core self than any of the other guises he wore virtually. If given the choice to inhabit only one character but it would be permanent with no real life attached, he would have chosen this one that was originally intended to be and to stay incognito. Maybe this would become possible in the future. Reading and rereading William Gibson’s cyber novels gave him that crazy hope because science fiction sometimes becomes science fact.

As the coach slowed for an off ramp, he felt his whole body revving up to high alert.

Would she be disappointed when she saw him? His throat dry, he liberated a Polo mint from the green, white and silver roll in his leather jacket pocket.

What if she wasn’t there to meet him for whatever reason?

Maybe it would have been better to stay safe on the other side of a dark screen, golden words rising continually in one computer lab or another at university as they interfaced with thousands of miles of ocean separating them if she was logged on from where she claimed to be. Bryn Mawr.

The Welsh name of her university had taken him by surprise, seemed to be a sign though he tried not to believe in such things, knowing that coincidence didn’t always indicate anything extraordinary. Life could be randomly strange and often was in his experience thus far.

He waited for some other people to disembark, though he refused to let himself be the last one to emerge from the glass and metal cocoon. Anything might happen. No point in delaying.

And, as his old walking boots touched down, he saw her in the crowd, both her arms up and waving, a colourful scarf wrapped around her neck. That she had recognised him without any photos being exchanged beforehand felt like a miracle.

His journey of four thousand miles was worth it if this was his only reward. Bright eyes in a soft face, her welcoming grin, the hug they wrapped each other in, wordlessly celebrating what felt like a reunion to him.

“Silverwings,” he murmured like a prayer when they disengaged.

She whispered his chosen name like a blessing, her chin tilted so she could look up at him, snowflakes drifting down around them like blessings from heaven. He decided he should code some weather for the Hot Air Balloon when he next had opportunity.

Reluctantly, he parted from her long enough to get his travel bag from the luggage that the driver was unearthing from the bowels of the beast that transported him here. He shouldered the awkward bag to have one hand free to hold hers as they walked to her car, feeling as overwhelmed as if he had just landed from a starship.

She asked him how the flight was, implying that he accomplished this on pterodactyl wings rather than doing something so ordinary as boarding a plane.

While she drove, he told her about how his friend psyched him out by pretending that a real car journey was virtual. Memory told him that he had heard her soft laugh before when she sat on picnic blankets in the Hot Air Balloon, her favourite place on Lambda Moo, though part of him understood that was only in his imagination.

Years later, as he watches green words materialise on a black computer screen in his study while his fingers caress an ergonomic keyboard, he knows he would choose his time with her again if that was possible. A sort of Groundhog Day, preferably that entire week, in perpetuity.

Should he have taken it as a sign when the blizzard closed down Philadelphia Airport so when she dropped him off, he literally could not leave for hours?

He remembers as if it was yesterday the taste of watery 7up and soft, warm pretzels, wandering around and around the corridors and how the airport was so maze-like with reconstruction in progress, trying to ignore the rising panic accumulating among all the other people stranded until he very nearly got a taxi back to Silverwings.

The words from Robert Frost’s poem that he once memorised came to his mind as he waited in the boarding queue. He knew he had promises to keep, but were they that crucial? Four thousand miles before I sleep.

What stopped him? Perhaps not being one hundred percent sure she would welcome his return despite their time together.

When it was too late, as the plane levelled out after climbing however many thousands of feet into the cloudy skies, he studies the locked hatch and considers how simple the code would be to unlock it. He has, after all, created a labyrinth with many secret doors.

He would dive out into the freezing air, his leather jacket shifting fluidly to pterodactyl wings and soar back to her, landing in the scrubby garden where they had both left footprints in the snow. She would look out the window and see him, wave like she had when he got off the coach.

His pulse beats with how possible this seems after hours spent typing and coding virtuality, then the anonymous person beside him asks where is he travelling?

“The wrong direction,” he says and, with a rudeness that is not like him, turns his head to gaze out the plane window at the storm that closed the Philadelphia airport and gave him hours to make up his mind. He regrets that decision probably more than any other he has made in his life.

***

Adjusting his posture, he sits upright, taking a deep breath, aware of the thin glass slivers of his shattered heart rearranging themselves as he surfaces completely into his current reality, acknowledging that she only inhabits his past.

Nothing physical is wrong with his heart, just this ghost pain that comes and goes and never appears when he is actually in a doctor’s presence. The EKG detected nothing to worry about, so he felt he has wasted NHS time on a phantom illness.

Silverwings only inhabits his past, a territory that he can only visit in his imagination. Nobody’s fault, just somehow, they drifted apart over the years, separated by the Atlantic Ocean and caught up in their separate life streams.

Was it when Hurricane Katrina exploded into the southern coast of America that he last connected with her in case the mega-storm might veer in her direction? And had they actually spoken or was their conversation through the medium of Lambda Moo?

He only remembers that he was desperate to find out if she was okay because circumstances were seriously out of joint. Perhaps it had been when a different disaster loomed, though he knows it was long before 2020 locked down the entire world.

Due to the prevailing storm, their planned hot air balloon ride in Philadelphia never happened. At the time, he hoped there would be another chance or she might come over and visit a real Welsh pub with him, but that was not to be. He is not sure, after all these years, whether or not she cherished the same hope.