To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him (24 page)

“Stephanie, listen. I have something to tell you. This is going to sound strange, but I don’t have a lot of time, so please listen . . .”

Xotcd restores all the subject’s memories, from beginning to end, erased scenarios and all. Even the routinely repressed instances of the subject waking up in the lab and discovering the electrodes and sensors attached to her body. He tries to code the unfolding of the truth in the most optimal way possible, so as not to shock her into mental instability.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

“I know. I know. I’m so sorry, Stephanie. I’m so sorry you had to find out about everything—that none of it’s been real.”

“Then . . . If none of it’s real, then what about you? What are you? Are you real, or part of the program?”

“I’m . . . I’m a friend.”

Xotcd works throughout the two nights—eighty-six hours straight—and then is forced to let the export team take over. He remembers the bag of sugar he emptied onto the sand pile so long ago, when no one was watching. Now, just as then, he’ll never know if it was enough.

“Miss Luna? Can you hear me, Miss Luna?”

“Yes, I can hear you.” Stephanie is groggy and sore. She sits up and focuses on the paramedic who’s reading her name from the ID in her wallet. All around, other women are being roused from their sleep in the middle of a scorched cornfield.

“Where am I?” she hears them mutter. “What happened?”

Good questions. Where are they? What
did
happen?

Stephanie thinks back. Her mind stretches back, past the last long hours of dreamless sleep, past the lifetimes of the last few months.

“Miss Luna, are you okay?”

Stephanie lies back on the grass and sees the stars.

“Yeah,” she says.

She
is
okay, isn’t she? In fact, she’s feeling pretty good. And everything’s going to be great.

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