A Million Words

Up above, on a blank wall, sat a widescreen video display showing swirls of blue, red, and orange moving along like tranquil waves. Then, in a flash, the screen switched to a drone shot of a large, rectangular building, boxes of white stone or glass stacked on top of each other, followed by a dark-blue-suited man standing in front of a rooftop garden, hedges snipped into swirls or elongated eggs.

    Meanwhile, through speakers at either corner ends of the wall, the man’s voice echoed, “Ever wish you could take in the beautiful beaches of Madrid again or revisit an argument with your ex to give them the perfect comeback?”

    The display faded to a tanned coast with glistening, clear water and then to two people silently yelling at one another, their eyes cut off at the top.

    “Well, dream no more! Here at Pic-A-Dream, we have state-of-the-art machines that will simulate the sights, sounds, and smells behind a photograph and take you for a tour through memory lane.”

    One of the machines appeared in full, a reclining chair similar to those at a dentist, attached to a large box encased with grey plastic, hiding the circuitry within. Coming out of the container was only an arm holding up a flat monitor, while a round headset rested on the seat’s cushion, its wires disappearing behind the chair’s base.

    “Simply give us a photograph. We’ll scan it in, and once you put on the headset, you’ll be transported back in time.”

    The steps were demonstrated on-screen by sterile people in a sterile white room, wearing plain clothes and smiling for nothing but to show their pearly teeth. The person in the Pic-A-Dream uniform—a blue polo shirt with the company logo at the heart—placed a photograph on the glass surface of a scanner and then closed its lid, a heavy droning whir buzzing from the device. Meanwhile, the client carefully put on the headset, ensuring its elastic band was wrapped tightly around their skull, that the suction cups latched onto their head like talons, and the visor was adjusted correctly so it obscured their whole vision.

    Finally, the worker flipped a rocker switch, and the client, standing in a black void with grid lines, looked around in awe as their environment changed to a tropical resort.

    “Have a drink and dance in Hawaii. See your kids when they were little or bigger or when they celebrated getting into college. Talk to your favorite celebrity when you met them at IHOP.”

    The display flew through different scenes, from the Hawaiian resort to a field with kids chasing each other holding fake swords, to a house’s dinner table where a teenager put down food, to a party with a young adult jumping for joy, to a shiny brown diner where LeBron James appeared from off-screen, and the client gasped like a fangirl.

    After that, it cut back to the man in his form-fitting suit.

    “Take your photo album to the next level. Visit Pic-A-Dream now and for only 49.99 dollars per half hour, experience the past in true, vivid detail.”

    Near the end, he was replaced with the company’s name written on a monochrome blue background, and a new voice quickly rattled off a clutter of words, “Interactions-with-people-is-based-off-generative-A.I.-dialogue. We-are-not-responsible-for-the-truth-of-any-statements-made-by-individuals-during-the-simulation.”

    Then, as abruptly as before, the display returned to its psychedelic waveforms of color, and thus, Deric looked away from the screen. Sitting alone, he waited in the lobby of the Pic-A-Dream building, a tall but narrow room with granite pillars along the sides and spotless teal glass between them. The chairs and sofa, arranged in an island, had a shiny black polish to their cushions and skin, with oak drawn along the edges and an elm wood coffee table in the middle, freshened by a palm-tree-like flower pot.

    Deric leaned back against the coarse hemp backrest of the sofa, staring ahead at the blue door on the opposite side of the room. He knew an employee would eventually come out of there to call him in, but they had yet to appear twelve minutes after his reservation. In the back of his mind, he felt relieved, perhaps wishing they would take even longer.

    He glanced down at the picture he had brought, his thumbs starting to clam after pressing so long against its sticky gloss paper. In it was him, standing next to a young man with an arm around his shoulder, both smiling, the flash it was taken with extending only to the surface of a table in front of them. The boy had dark skin and black, bushy hair in rows of braids going to the back of his head. A tank top opened up his skinny arms, veins running down the inside. He was fifteen at the time.

    Deric then combed his fingers through his own hair, the front sticking out like a ball of needles. It was brown, and his skin was pale, tear-throughs burrowed deep inside like canals of black smoke. He lifted his head back, rubbing at the bristly hairs along his neck, making him feel dirty and unkempt, which was why he dressed in sizable jeans and a grey hoodie. It fit the disheveled look, at least, making it a little less embarrassing to be out in public like that.

    A door suddenly opened, the click and creaking sounds of it ringing hollow through the lobby, and Deric’s eyes snapped to the blue door. It wasn’t that one. Instead, someone had come in through the entrance on the left, hidden behind a pillar.

    A man walked over with an exaggerated totter as if he had to compensate for a limp. His bronze face was defined by wrinkles, ripples stacked above his eyes, and waves fell down his nose, swerving around his puffy lips, while a white beard and a green turban gave his head the shape of a keyhole.

    As that man teetered over and sat in the chair right beside Deric, his name came back to memory. Mr. Bashar, a frequenter of Pic-A-Dream. He bore the reputation of a kind old soul who never refused a chance at small talk. Deric had heard about him before through idle chatter when the lobby was busier—rumors filling the air that if you greeted him, Mr. Bashar would always respond in kind while adding, “It’s a good day, yes,” at the end.

    Deric decided to test that out.

    “Good afternoon,” he said.

    After turning slowly, Mr. Bashar’s cheeks bloated from a smile, the wrinkles darkening as they were pressed together.

    “Good afternoon,” he replied, the pucker of his lips causing his beard and mustache to tilt. “It’s a good day, yes.”

    A breathy chuckle escaped Deric’s nose as he looked away and nodded. “It is,” he said.

    Then, Mr. Bashar lifted the bag he had brought onto his knees and fished out a photo album. Its leather cover was embroidered with a kaleidoscopic pattern, and inside was a collage of landscape pictures with the diversity of the entire world.

    Seeing that made Deric look back at his own photo, thinking perhaps he came… underprepared. Bringing only one picture to revisit only one memory felt wasteful against the breadth of visions Mr. Bashar had with him.

    “What did you bring?”

    Caught by surprise, Deric’s eyes jerked up to find Mr. Bashar’s head tilted on a craned neck, small dimples marking the edges of his mouth.

    “Oh…” Deric chuckled with a nervous tremble. “Just… a happy moment. Something to make me feel a bit better.”

    Mr. Bashar leaned over for a peek.

    “Is he gone?” he asked softly.

    “Huh…? Oh! Oh, no, no. He’s at his father’s now—I just haven’t been able to see him much, is all.” The half smile on Deric’s face slowly faded when he glanced at the picture and licked his dry lips. “I miss him, is all,” he murmured, expelling a wispy breath.

    “What will you say to him?” Mr. Bashar asked, a faint croak in his voice.

    Deric looked up with beady eyes. The question threw him for a loop, but as he pondered it in silence, his expression gradually sobered. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Thirty minutes seem like a lot, but I’m afraid I’ll still manage to fumble the bag and waste that time.”

    To that, Mr. Bashar nodded and hummed, bobbing his head as he scoured across the room until pausing at the blue door. Then, he returned to Deric and said, “Wait. I forgot to pick a photo!” He opened his album and began browsing through it, his weak, leathery hands causing its sheets to wobble. “Which one should I see today? Which one…?” he muttered to his collection.

    Deric also took a gander at the pictures, tilting to the side so he could see. Mountain ranges, jungles, Aztec ruins, deserts, tulip fields, and more.

    “Seems like you’ve been to a lot of places,” he said to the old man, and Mr. Bashar then grinned, not looking away.

    “I think I’ll go with this one.” The old man’s thumb and index finger plucked a laminate picture out of its sleeve before flapping it around a bit. Within a white frame was a dirt road traveling deeper into the horizon, towards distant, brown mountains poking through the clear blue sky, accompanied by a single tree halfway down the path, mothering three bushes.

    “That one?” Deric said, puzzled.

    Mr. Bashar smiled at him, pushing his eyes into slits, and he replied, “Why not?”

    “I’m sorry. It just seemed a little ordinary.”

    “That’s fine.” Mr. Bashar placed his picture on the table and the album back into his bag, bending forward to set it beside his feet. “Ordinary can be fun. Say, what is a photo to you?”

    Deric frowned, yet he found that the question didn’t surprise him as much. He expected it in some way. “A memory,” he answered. “A window into another time of your life.” While holding up his picture, the overhead lights cast a streak of white glimmers across the faces within. “It carries the emotions you had back then… and also the ones you have now, looking back. Sometimes, sweet memories can sour over time, and sometimes… you regret not treasuring them enough.”

    A quiet grunt came from Mr. Bashar before he picked up his photo from the table. “I see them as stories,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t go out much. A lot of work at the store, and Yara is going to college now. If I did not have these, I would have never known big waterfalls turn into mist at the bottom, or that trees in the savanna grow like mushrooms—that lakes can freeze over and be walked on.” Mr. Bashar turned the photo to Deric. “What do you feel when you look at this picture?”

    Staring at the simple, empty landscape, a myriad of thoughts swirled in Deric’s head. Loneliness, the end, freedom, release, dread at what could be behind the tree, calm at the vast open expanse, and even more feelings he didn’t have the words to explain. “A lot… Isolation.”

    “I can tell you about the path that fades into the horizon, or the mountain rising into the blue sky, and the tree all alone in the field, looking after three little bushes, but just words can never tell as much a story as this can.” Mr. Bashar pushed the picture closer to Deric’s face. “A thousand words worth!”

    Hearing the old man’s excited outcry, Deric chuckled, melodic puffs shooting from his nose. “That’s true, but don’t you ever think about going back to old memories?”

    Mr. Bashar shook his head. “No, why would I?”

    “To experience better times,” Deric said, punctuated by a scoff as if that were obvious.

    “Instead of making new ones?”

    He staggered for a second, his lips moving wordlessly. “You can change things,” he said. “Try different conversations with the simulation. Wouldn’t you be curious—what was it…? Yara. What if you asked her to stay instead of leaving for college? Aren’t you curious how she’ll react?”

    “I am not. Why are you?”

    As his chest rose and fell, Deric pressed his teeth together, the strain it created making his cheeks twitch. “When you say the wrong thing—no matter how quickly you take it back—people will hold onto that for a long time. To keep them happy… it helps to practice it in, doesn’t it? I mean, I know it’s a simulation, but with my clumsy mouth—”

    Mr. Bashar held up his hand, a sign to stop. His eyes were closed, and his head turned away. When he returned his gaze, he said, “You are not talking to him. It is not real.”

    “Neither are the landscapes it makes,” Deric quickly snapped back.

    “Yes, but a mountain tells you everything it is on the surface. What you see can be captured on paper, and what you smell can be replicated, but people are different.” With a trembling finger, Mr. Bashar tapped at his temple. “There is a world up here that cannot be captured. Colors, sounds, smells, they’re not enough to convey even a single thought. This picture might tell you more than words could, but words mean much more than just what they are to the person receiving them. Don’t waste them on a simulation. Tell it to him.” His finger then tapped at Deric’s photo. “Here is proof enough that he can be happy with you.”

    Silently, Deric stared at the picture, at the kid’s awkward smile, and he could hear everyone yelling, ‘Cheers!’ in unison before the flash went off. He could taste the sweet cream of the cake and its fluffy loaf laced with apples, pieces of it stuck between his teeth for hours. He remembered saying ‘Happy Birthday’ to him upon coming in before the party, and the boy ran over to hug him, thrilled that Deric had made it.

    That was the proudest he had ever felt of himself and bigger than the strongest man.

    “I think I know what to say now.” He looked at Mr. Bashar with a taut expression, seeing the older man’s eyebrows go up slightly. “Nothing,” he said. “You’re right; it’d be a waste to talk with that thing… but still… I want to feel like I did back then, even for just a little bit.” Mr. Bashar sank back against the chair as he listened to the man’s speech. “It might not be a new experience, but sometimes, it can’t hurt to look back on things, can it? Why else would we keep pictures of ourselves?”

    Suddenly, with a loud click that pitched high in the tall, open lobby, the blue door opened. Out of it stepped a woman wearing the Pic-A-Dream shirt, holding a tablet in one flat hand.

    “Deric Fowler?”

    “Yes, that’s me.” He raised an arm and stood up, already making his way to the employee as she told him he could come in. Mr. Bashar watched him go, happy to see confidence in the man’s brisk stride; no moment of hesitation before he disappeared through the blue door, and it shut behind him.

    Yet, in the lull that followed, Mr. Bashar noticed that a quiver was tickling his stomach, and he started scratching at his turban to get rid of an itch on his scalp. Seemingly out of nowhere, holding the landscape photo felt uncomfortable, almost like it… was a waste, so he put it back on the table, and while looking around the room at nothing in particular, he took out his phone.

    He opened his gallery and started to scroll, images of passports, dishes, and invoices passing by until his thumb slammed on the screen for it to stop. Second to the last row, third from the left, was a picture of Yara holding the acceptance letter, mouth open mid-cheer, a vivid glimmer in her beautiful brown eyes.

    “I’ll try this one,” Mr. Bashar mumbled to himself, alone in the lobby.