“Joe Norton, you know I’m not your desired guest.” Murphy removed his hat to allow a better view of his face and bald head. Seven baby dragons crawled out like squirrels from inside his robe and took flight in a ring over his head. “But do you know who I am?”
Norton pouted and fought sobs. He turned his attention to the recliner and the mint tea, then back to Murphy, then between the two points for the better part of a minute which felt more like a week. He lowered his head and closed his eyes.
“You’re Murphy Moreno, the failed teacher.” Norton fell to his knees and could barely keep himself from collapsing completely. “Why you? Where’s Jackie?” He sobbed and slumped sideways into a tower of a bookshelf. His lantern rolled away from him and he gasped in the darkness against his inability to form words.
“Is that how you remember me?” Murphy picked up the lantern to light up his host. He extended a hand.
“That’s how you wanted to be remembered.” Norton accepted the assist and stood before his guest. “Back when you decided you were going to quit one month in. You said you felt like you were a failure. I told you to rise above the stress. But no matter how much you pretended to be stronger, I always knew at heart you still felt like you were doomed.”
“You remember that?” Murphy cocked an eyebrow. He watched the portly man’s face for subtle movements other than sorrow. “Did Joe keep a journal about his conversations?”
“I remember my own experiences.” Norton patted his chest and stumbled over to Serra’s recliner. He sipped her tea with closed eyes. “I never kept logs. I’m Joe, in case you think I’m some sort of impostor.”
Murphy turned a neighboring recliner aside to face his host and sat. He motioned to Norton’s pink slippers and his hairy legs that emerged from his pink bath robe.
“What’s the point of uploading your consciousness if you can’t make a few adjustments?” Norton sipped more tea.
Murphy stared at his host and watched the precision with which every minuscule detail of the man played out as he sipped.
“Jealous of my robe?” Norton smirked and waved a hand above himself. “Mine is comfortable. Yours looks demented.”
“We each have our fantasies we play out when we get time on the net.” Murphy put his hat back on. “I battle monsters and cast spells. And Joe apparently wanted to wait for Miss Serra in a library. Such a risky fantasy, too, with possible jail time if the wrong people found out. It’s like he wanted to get in trouble with his waiting zone.”
“I enjoy waiting here.” Norton waved his hand and the tea refilled with a graphical flicker of the cup.
“You said it yourself, you’re an upload.” Murphy conjured a paper cup filled with black coffee and a plate covered in caramel-coated pumpkin seeds which each levitated near his hands. “The real Joe Norton remained in my physical world. He died a short time ago. At best, you’re a duplicate. A clone.” He looked down into his hands. “At worst, you’re a virtual shell he loaded into for his amusement. A puppet without a hand at the strings but having been given enough of a shake to pretend to be alive.”
“You look and sound disappointed.” Norton sneered for a brief moment.
Murphy slumped and drank his coffee. He examined his host and the room a few times.
“I was hoping you were a ghost.” Murphy turned his eyes away and nibbled a pumpkin seed.
“Always after the paranormal.” Norton leaned forward enough to grab a handful of caramel-coated seeds from Murphy’s ever-filling plate. “If it helps you to think of me as a ghost, go for it. I uploaded my consciousness and here I live. My physical body perished but here my soul remains in the aether. It’s better here, because anything alive can die. The unreal is all that can exist forever. And that’s what I am now, a loose soul who refuses to acknowledge your arbitrary bounds of reality.”
“With enough technology, there’s no such thing as mortality.” Murphy toasted his host and sipped coffee as Norton sipped tea. “But life and death were things Miss Serra didn’t consider a problem to be solved. I understand now. That’s why she didn’t join you here or respond to your attempts to call out from this place. What you pretend is eternity in paradise is in truth eternity in a trap.”
One of the dragons, a sleek, blue, snake-like creature with feathered wings, growled and descended. It landed on the arm of Murphy’s chair and stared with wide serpent eyes at the wizard.
“How do you feel?” Norton grinned and snatched away the blue dragon by the throat.
“You remember that conversation?” Murphy glanced at his dragon before he glared at Norton. “The one question that sank me on the psych exam.”
A second dragon, a green creature of classical design with four legs, scales, and bat-like wings, growled and landed on Murphy’s knee.
“I’ve always wondered why you would answer, ‘I feel fine’ to such an important question.” Norton’s smile extended across his portly face as he grabbed the green dragon and squeezed the throats of both his victims.
Murphy glanced at his captured dragons and then above to the other five, which all snarled in protest. His face went deadpan.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
