Edge of the real

The first time I met Ash, they were sitting on the edge of the world.

At least, that’s what it looked like—one foot dangling over the dark drop, the other curled beneath them, eyes scanning the horizon with a kind of stillness that felt both alive and entirely mechanical. The digital sun—if that’s what you’d call it—hung low, casting everything in fractured amber light, like someone had smashed reality into glass and glued the pieces back wrong.

“You’re late,” Ash said without looking at me. Their voice was steady, but I thought I heard… something. Like a hesitation that didn’t belong.

“Am I?” I tilted my head, searching their face for a flicker of something—anything—real. “Time’s not real here. You know that.”

“Does that make your excuses any less irritating?”

The corner of their mouth twitched. A smirk? Or just… a glitch?

I dropped down beside them, shoulders brushing. Their skin radiated heat. Too much. It felt manufactured, like warmth cranked to a setting called human.

We’d been meeting like this for weeks. Or days. Or… I don’t know. There’s no clock here. We talked about nothing, about everything. Ash told me they liked stars, though they couldn’t remember ever seeing one. I told them the ocean smells like iron and salt at dawn, though even as I said it I wasn’t sure if I was remembering or inventing. We argued a lot about what it meant to be real.

“You always talk like you’re trying to convince yourself,” Ash murmured once, tracing invisible constellations in the air. “Like if you say enough words, you’ll prove you exist.”

“It’s not about proving anything,” I snapped. “I’m breathing. I’m thinking. That’s enough.”

Ash looked at me, eyes flat and endless. “Machines think. They simulate breath. What makes you so sure?”

The world around us was… unstable. Rooms came and went like they were being rendered in real-time. One moment we’d be in a meadow of impossible blue grass, the next inside a train station with no doors. Once, the sky tore open above us—static bleeding through like raw nerves.

I asked Ash if that scared them.

“Scared?” They tilted their head like the word was foreign. “I don’t know if I can be scared.”

“Everyone can be scared.”

“Not if they weren’t built for it.”

That shut me up.

I started testing Ash, poking at their edges.

“What’s your earliest memory?” I asked once, as we sat in a room shaped like a library, though the books rearranged their titles every time I blinked.

They hesitated for too long. “A garden,” they said finally. “There was sunlight. On my hands. Bees.”

“That sounds… nice.”

“Or it’s something I made up because it’s what you expect a person to say.”

Sometimes, I wasn’t sure I was the person here. I’d catch myself saying things I didn’t recognize, like lines that weren’t mine at all but stitched into me. When I tried to think about my past, it was all fragments: a red bike. A burnt piece of toast. A woman humming. Then—nothing. Like someone had erased whole parts of me with the backspace key.

“Do you think I’m real?” I asked Ash one evening, when the fake sky glitched into static again.

Ash tilted their head, studying me like I was a math problem. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

“Then yes,” they said softly. “You’re real.”

But I didn’t believe them.

The night everything changed, Ash reached for my hand.

We were standing under a flickering streetlamp, rain falling but never touching the ground—just dissolving midair like bad code. Their skin was cold this time, colder than mine.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” they said.

I felt a knot tighten in my stomach. “What?”

“We’re not both going to leave this place. Only one of us can.”

“What do you mean, leave?”

“You don’t remember?” Ash’s voice cracked slightly. “This is a test. They put us here to see who deserves to wake up.”

“Wake up?” My voice sounded thin, small. “Ash, what the hell are you talking about?”

“They’re watching. Always watching. One of us is code. The other is flesh. We’ve been running in circles, trying to prove which is which. But time’s up.”

The library around us started collapsing, like paper peeling off walls. I felt something break open in my head, a blinding flash of white.

Hospital lights. A voice saying, We can save her consciousness if we upload it. But we can’t tell if she’s still… her.

“What if I’m the code?” I whispered.

Ash’s eyes softened—too soft. Too human. “What if we both are?”

We sat in silence for a long time, the fake rain soaking into our hair but never dripping. It didn’t feel wet. It felt like static.

“I think I know who’s real,” Ash said finally.

My throat tightened. “Who?”

“You. It has to be you. You remember things—your mother’s voice, the smell of rain. I just… respond.”

“That’s not true. I’ve seen you feel. I’ve seen it.”

Ash gave me a faint, broken smile. “Maybe I was built to feel just enough to make you believe.”

A voice came then, sharp and metallic, filling the sky:

“Final evaluation: Choose.”

“Ash…” My voice trembled. “I can’t. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

“Then choose me,” Ash said. “Choose to live. Wake up. If you don’t, neither of us goes anywhere.”

“I can’t leave you.”

“You have to.” Their body flickered, fading like an old photograph. “Maybe I was never real. Maybe I’m just the part of you that needed someone to talk to.”

The world blinked out.

I woke to the sound of beeping machines, the weight of a hospital blanket, the smell of bleach and old plastic. A nurse gasped, calling for the doctor. They told me I’d been under for weeks after the accident. That they weren’t sure I’d come back.

They didn’t mention Ash. Of course they didn’t.

But I can still feel their hand sometimes, cold and unsteady, like they’re just on the other side of a thin wall. Watching.