Loneliness Universe - Uncanny Magazine (2025)

From: Nefnef_baby@lyons-edu.org
To: Cara Hasani CaraMia1990@mailbuddy.gr
September 18, 2015, 5:36 am
Subject: I am drifting, but thank you for the photos

My dear Cara,

Thank you for sending me the photos, I never thought I’d feel this way again. But the pictures help. They really do. I can’t stop looking at them. Thank you for scanning and emailing them to me. These photos and our old videos are all I’ve got in this place.

Before your messages stop coming through, I want to tell you this: It’s all my fault, Cara. It’s my fault because I ignored you and let us grow apart. But it’s also my fault for trying to reconnect with you. That was a stupid idea. I don’t know if we would have hit it off again like when we were kids. Perhaps it would have been super awkward and by the time I got on the bus home I’d have this weird taste in my mouth like eating a lemon raw, skin and seeds and all. Or perhaps we’d be best friends again and you’d invite me to your house for Easter and I’d see your family and we’d keep in touch until we grew disgustingly old and died. (Perhaps part of this will happen anyway. I am afraid that if I stop getting your messages I will be lost forever.)

But we’ll never know. Because despite what the scientists may say, I believe I broke the universe by coming to find you. I broke it and I don’t know how to put it back the way it was. Or even close. I defied some sort of unspoken law of the universe, Cara, and the universe pushed back and then kept pushing. I know that now, in this place that isn’t a place.

Your oldest friend,

Nefeli

Nefeli paced back and forth the whole five steps from one side of the bus stop to the other, sneaking glances at the passersby while typing furiously on her phone. She was trying to guess which passing woman in her mid-twenties Cara had become. Rehearsing what she would say once they met face to face. In the one and only blurry picture of her grown-up-self Cara had posted on social media she was a blonde (Cara, a blonde! How times change), three-quarters profile, leaning casually against a wall. But that photo had been over two years old, based on the timestamp. She could have looked like anyone now. They had agreed to meet at the bus stop more than one hour ago but they were still working on it.

Nefeli: Lol, nice one, Cara. Now come on. I am hungry.

Cara: U sure you can’t see me? I am sitting right here? Are u even at the right bus stop?

Nefeli looked around at the people arriving in Korinthos, her hometown. She had gotten on a similar intercity bus as a child with her parents many years ago and moved to Athens. She left everyone and everything behind, including her best friend. She might have forgotten a lot of places and people but never this bus stop and never Cara.

Nefeli: Yeah, I am sure. This place is pretty much the same.

Nefeli started typing another answer, then stopped. This was the only place Cara could have been waiting for her. The only intercity bus stop. When Nefeli found the courage to message her, Cara had agreed to meet up but said she couldn’t come to Athens to see Nefeli, because she had to keep her parents’ store now that they were old. We can’t all be feathers in the wind, she had said to Nefeli and that stung a little, but Nefeli might have deserved it.

Another bus came and people rushed in. There was no one at the bus stop now. No way Cara was hiding here unless she was transparent. Or she was lying.

Nefeli looked to her right, to the rest of the bench. Empty. There wasn’t even the occasional passing woman in her mid-twenties that Nefeli could mistake for Cara. She was alone on the bench and it was starting to feel like a bad joke.

She called Cara but it went straight to voicemail.

Then a message appeared on the screen and Nefeli’s face turned red and pink. Once for anger and once for shame.

Cara: Are u ghosting me again in ur own weird way or something? Just like with the letters?

Nefeli: No, I am really here. Where are you?

Nefeli didn’t technically ghost her when they were kids; ghosting was not a term that existed in their vocabulary at the time. But before her family moved to Athens she had promised to write and rarely did. Cara had actually written her several letters (the pre-internet days were rough) but she had gotten maybe one response from Nefeli who was in her own rat-race of trying to fit in with the big city kids. Perhaps if the internet had been a thing back then, they would have still kept in touch.

When she tracked down Cara again, a few months back, it was through social media. One day she just found herself googling her and she felt a little bit like a stalker. Cara’s profile picture was a tiny auburn-haired Cara sitting on the beach, facing the camera with the sun on her back, pouring water from her plastic bucket straight onto a hole in the golden sand. There was also a tiny Nefeli in the same photo, standing right behind her, pouring water over Cara with her own plastic bucket. This was a sign, Nefeli thought then. Next thing she knew, she was sending Cara a friend request.

Then, an impossible selfie came through. One where adult Cara was sitting on the same bench on the exact same spot Nefeli was occupying at that very moment. The poster loomed over Cara’s head in soft blues and eggy yellows.

Cara: Right. The fuck. Here.

“Can you fucking believe it? The audacity of it all!” Nefeli kept talking too loudly and gesticulating too much, making Antonis, her brother, readjust his position on the couch next to her every minute or so. The bright blues and purples of TinyCastle™, the video game they were playing, cast a light that made the room look like some kind of nightclub. In the midst of it all loomed Antonis’s avatar, a very sinister-looking ghost.

Antonis could not believe it. In fact, he had probably stopped listening to her rant right about when his werewolf neighbor had sent him a new wallpaper pattern. A thank you gift for watering the roses outside the werewolf’s castle. Antonis said that he’d prefer to be paid in teeth, the currency of TinyCastle™, but as he had explained to Nefeli, you have to roll with the game, that’s half the fun.

Nefeli didn’t know why he played that viciously cutesy game instead of going out and meeting people in the flesh. Like she just had, even though it blew up in her face.

“Told you that friendship had gone stale. Just let it go.”

“And do what? Play games on my days off? Do you even see any people?”

Nefeli felt the skin-warmed plastic of the controller in her hands. She didn’t know what to do in the game. How to build her own castle and how to befriend her stupid monster-neighbors. (She didn’t know how to befriend anyone apparently. Human or monster.) It was why she never liked playing video games with Antonis or with anyone.

“Hey, these are my friends I’m playing with. Technically, I see more people than you.”

That was factually true. Between the delivery job for a local pizza place, his gaming community, and his occasional outings with his buddies from college, Antonis’s social life was light years ahead of Nefeli’s. Nefeli used to justify this by telling herself she had just returned to Greece from her Graphic Design MFA abroad and was trying to make her one-person company take off. After she had settled in her new life, she would have time to reconnect with old friends. It was time to do it. Cara was the first person she thought of, even though she was the one she hadn’t seen the longest. If she was going to fix her life she would start from the beginning. Nostalgia plays weird games.

Fuck Cara.

Nefeli left the controller at the coffee table and watched as her vampire avatar got stuck in the rose bushes Antonis’s ghost had made blossom.

“You know what I need right now? All the potato chips. Like, literally every flavor ever put on a shelf? I need them.”

Antonis looked annoyed for a second but then his face lit up. “I was going to go on a quick supermarket run. I’ll get you the chips if you go chill in your room and let me play in peace.”

Nefeli grunted but got up nonetheless. When half, then a whole hour passed by, and there was no other sound in the house but Nefeli’s own breathing, she reluctantly left her bed and shuffled back to the living room like a potato chip-hankering zombie. She would have rocked that character in the game. The living room didn’t look fun anymore. Instead, it was half in shadows and half drenched in a light the color of crème pâtissière as her mom called it, curtesy of the old beige chandelier. The TV was off, both the controllers were left on the coffee table, and Antonis was nowhere to be found. There were however three bags of potato chips waiting for her: regular, BBQ, and sour cream. She grabbed them all greedily and hurried to her room in case Antonis changed his mind and came back for them, but she thought she should text him just in case.

Nefeli: Hey, little ghost, thanks for the chips. Too bad you aren’t here to share. I guess you took my advice.

Antonis: …? When did u steal the chips? I should take ghost lessons from u.

Nefeli: What do you mean steal? You left them on the couch before you went out?

Antonis: I’m right here? Building stables. Got so many teeth from a swamp creature. Just bring back the BBQs. K?

Nefeli stalked to the living room so fast she didn’t stop to think about chips. Chips were suddenly the last thing on her mind. The whole house was exactly as it had been five minutes ago. Cemetery-quiet. No Antonis anywhere. She reached a shaky hand in the pocket of her sweatpants and pulled out her phone.

Nefeli: Tell me you’re fucking joking right now.

Antonis: What’s going on?

Nefeli: This is messed up, Antonis. After everything I told you.

Antonis: Look, I don’t know what’s up but I’m coming for the chips. U should get some sleep.

Nefeli, as if in a dream, dropped on the couch and stared at the dark screen until at some point she fell asleep. It must have been sleep, right? Because when she opened her eyes again, the first thing she focused her gaze on was an empty, crumpled bag of BBQ-flavored chips left on the coffee table.

She looked around as if she’d been introduced to the apartment for the first time. In fact, this was the place where her parents had raised her and her brother after they arrived in Athens. Nobody had passed through here. Nefeli was sure of it. Even if she had fallen asleep, she would have at least heard her brother and startled awake again. She wasn’t sitting in the most comfortable sleeping position and Antonis was never mouse-quiet.

Nefeli picked up the misshapen bag like it was an imaginary object and crushed it in her hands just to feel its existence. To know it’s there. Then she found her phone and messaged her brother again. She didn’t have the courage to call him because deep down she knew it would go to voicemail or to nowhere at all. Just like with Cara.

Nefeli: Where are you now?

It took half an hour for him to respond.

Antonis: Just woke up. Making coffee.

Nefeli: On the stove?

Antonis: Nope. On my PS5.

Nefeli: Don’t move.

Nefeli waded down the corridor as if in a dream and even though deep inside she knew what she was going to see when she turned the corner to the kitchen, it still broke something inside her when she faced nothing. The stove was cold and unused and the briki was still inside the bottom drawer. There was nobody there.

Nefeli wasn’t proud of what she did in the weeks that followed but those were desperate times.

The first people she visited were her parents. They now lived in a smaller apartment in Peristeri, one of the western suburbs. They had claimed that was all the space they needed and they even had a small yard, since their apartment was almost semi-ground floor. Their windows overlooked a small park. It didn’t take Nefeli too long to get there. It was a half-hour subway ride and she had texted them before she left her house, but she was still afraid she would be too late. Or that’s what how it felt to her. Like a race against time and space. Her mom had texted back that she would bake ravani for her. The building had a side entrance, where her parents’ apartment was. As she crossed the yard, walking down the small, stone path to the main door, she saw the kitchen lights were on and then rang the bell. They buzzed her in but the buzzing was cut very short. Like someone had slapped her mom’s hand away from the button.

Nefeli ran up the few steps and knocked on the apartment door as if she was being chased and in need of a hiding place. The longer the silence stretched the louder she felt her heart beat in her ears and the harder she knocked on the door. She resorted to the spare key she had brought with her for this reason, although she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. Everything inside the apartment was pitch dark. Even the kitchen, although it did smell like someone had been baking. Nefeli stood on the doorstep for an undetermined amount of time, unable to lift her hands and turn on the lights. Then her phone buzzed.

Mom: Where are you? I buzzed you inside, didn’t I?

Nefeli looked at the text miserably and responded with something about forgetting to turn off the stove back home. There was no point going through another round of this. Something was wrong. Irreversibly, inevitably wrong. And worst of all: the wrong thing began with her.

What added insult to injury was how she had left things with Cara—the beginning of everything. For a second time she let Cara down. Even if not on purpose. What’s worse, she let her anger get the best of her even though Cara wasn’t the person she was really angry at. That was mostly herself.

Over the course of the next few weeks, she stalked friends from college, relatives, and neighbors she had known ever since she was a kid. Or, more accurately, she stalked their houses and jobs and social media or messaged them to figure where they would be at a given time. It didn’t matter, really. They were nowhere to be found. Not in the flesh at least, or face-to-face through the screen of her phone. She would only see their avatars and pictures on social media like the ghosts of relationships past, and occasionally exchange a message or two.

The world was still filled with people, of course. Just people she knew nothing or very little about. And just because of that she felt the world shrinking, become a tiny thing, even if, physics-wise, as far as she could tell, it remained the same.

From: Nefnef_baby@lyons-edu.org
To: Antonis Galliatsos, Mariza Galliatsou, Cara Hasani, Apost…
July 5 2015, 7:36 pm
Subject: What the hell is happening to me? (An explanation)

Hi everyone!

I know this is a very weird mass email, but please hear me out first. For some of you (all of you?) it might seem like I’ve fallen off the face of the Earth. But guess what? I literally fell off the face of the Earth (ha ha). I don’t think you and I are in the same place anymore. And by you, I mean all the people I care about. (Yes, that’s every single one of you. Really.)

What I think is happening is…I am in some parallel universe situation? I’ve been doing some research about it. I watched over a hundred science videos. Okay, some of them were reels (I’ve only got this much time on my hands) and I can almost tell the point in time that the rift started. Suddenly it’s like I am in one room and all of you are in another. Our rooms are identical and have clones of the same people who I know casually or not at all (for example the blonde barista in the coffee shop around the corner is still there), but none that I am connected to intimately. I call it Loneliness Universe. (Dad, look I am finally, finally into science!)

I can sort of feel all of you being somewhere close by, mostly from the stuff Antonis moves around. It’s like our rooms overlap sometimes and sometimes they drift apart. Antonis, I’m eating from the food you’ve been leaving around in the fridge (sorry!). Also our rooms can communicate through social media (electromagnetic fields?) but not when I try to phone or video call you. The Loneliness Universe is doing its own thing, I guess. I am not 100% sure if all of you are together in that other room. I don’t even know if you are okay. I really hope you are okay, guys. Please let me know? I love you and I miss you. Even the ones I haven’t seen in years. At least I know you exist somewhere. I still remember all of you. I wish I could get everyone back.

Anyway, I don’t know how to come back to you, but I am hanging in there. Maybe if I wait long enough the rooms will sort of settle into each other again? One can only hope. Please don’t freak out too much when you read this email. I am not having some sort of meltdown (yet). Mom, I am okay and I eat well (as well as Antonis’s eating habits allow). I even go shopping myself sometimes. For some reason I still have my clients who pay me for stuff. Yay for capitalism in any universe!

P.S. I KNOW you won’t believe me, although I desperately hope you do. It doesn’t matter if you don’t. Just humor me, okay?

I love you in any universe.

Nefeli

If this was not an email but instead an instant message service, she would have seen the several people are typing notification stuck at the bottom of the screen. Because pretty soon her email was overflooding with panic-stricken sheets of text (mostly from her mom, to be honest) of people most definitely not humoring her. The responses ranged from Mom-responses, to a polite That’s horrible! Whatever is happening we are spiritually with you! from a couple of Nefeli’s old high school classmates, to a few college friends privately sending their therapists’ contact information, to Cara doing the most Cara-like thing and trying to call her. And then when that didn’t work as expected, she tried again and again and only then did she send an email saying: I don’t know what the hell is happening but please call me whenever. I mean it.

Cara, had always been a boomer at heart and Nefeli loved her all the more for it. She loved all things old and never wanted to change. Like when she made Nefeli watch all the black and white Greek comedies or dressed all retro in her much older sister’s hand-me-downs. Nefeli realized that she still did love her, no matter how far behind Nefeli thought she had left Cara and their small town. Suddenly she found herself wishing they had never left when she was a kid and wondering if that was the moment the real rift happened. If that was when two Nefeles were born. One that wrote back to Cara and one that didn’t. And when she tried to be there again and fill that gap between her universe and Cara’s, that void reacted and backfired. She had been gone for too long anyway. She ought to have not cared, and because she did, the world tried to fix her empathy or perhaps her neediness by locking her outside its borders. Suddenly Nefeli thought she was on to something but didn’t have time to complete the puzzle in her head because her phone buzzed.

Antonis: Can u like, log into the game for a moment? I need to show you sth.

Before Nefeli had time to roll her eyes the phone buzzed again with a message from Dad.

Dad: Listen kiddo, I know that you left home. It’s okay. Take some time off. I get that you’re bummed that you have no close friends. Don’t let it get you down.

Dad: Go out and meet new people. Don’t get stuck on the past. Just take care of yourself for me. Okay?

Nefeli: Thanks, Dad.

It was like she was texting with herself. Suddenly Nefeli remembered where she got her buckle-up-and-get-over-it attitude from. Dad had told her something similar when she had been feeling nostalgic about their old life in Korinthos. About Cara. Don’t let it get you down. New friends are always better! It was a little cruel both to Cara and to herself, but Nefeli knew he was only trying to cheer her up. Make her do something with her new life. And by taking his advice and forgetting about Cara she had set off a cascade of events that, years later, would blow up in her face.

But there was something helpful in what her father had said, both back then and now. She should go out and meet people. As much as she hated feeling exposed like that, she hated being utterly alone more. There were only new friends to be made now. Everyone else had disappeared.

The blonde barista’s name was Katya. She only worked weekend afternoons. On weekdays she studied production design. Working on weekends sucked because she couldn’t catch a film with her friends but she made up for it by making their coffee just the way they liked it and sending them silly capybara memes every morning. She was worried they would bond without her and leave her behind. Nefeli was actually surprised by how many things she learned about Katya in such a short span of time.

It helped that their areas of interest had some overlap. Katya loved art and they spent the first couple of hours at the coffee shop arguing on and off about color theory and how much leeway one could have with their color scheme. On the second day they discussed the best graphic design software and ended up commiserating on the current job market for creatives.

On the third day, Nefeli decided to come earlier and bring her sketchbook along, hoping to catch Katya’s attention once more. She set her phone on silent mode, annoyed by people asking isn’t it time to show her face again? And whatever it is there must be something they could do. Her brother—having his priorities straight—kept texting her to log into the game. This was Katya’s work and she shouldn’t be seen ignoring the other customers, so Nefeli made an effort to look occupied until the barista came to her first. Lately, Nefeli’s sketchbook had been filling up with theories about her situation. She had drawn pages upon pages of people stuck in rectangles Nefeli thought of as rooms. The rooms were arranged in various ways on the paper Nefeli had renamed the Elsewhere. Parallel to each other, opposite each other, in some cases the rooms neighboring each other but the people in them looking only to the front, like some sort of people-stable stalls. Nefeli was looking for a way back to her friends and family by drawing various lines connecting the boxes.

“Is that a Pepper’s Ghost?”

Nefeli jumped at Katya’s question, accidentally pushing the biscuit that came with her coffee off the edge of the countertop. Katya smiled and brought her a complimentary brownie instead.

“I’m sorry, I was distracted,” Nefeli said apologetically. She hoped this wouldn’t stop Katya from chatting with her again. She hoped they were still friendly. She sounded too needy in her head so she stopped thinking about it.

Katya seemed eager to explain, which made Nefeli sigh with relief. “Pepper’s Ghost is an illusion used in theater. It’s basically two actors being in two different but identical rooms but appearing like they are in the same room together. One room is hidden and the image of the hidden actor is projected onto the visible room. But the audience can only see one room and one actor in the flesh. The other one was never really there.”

“An illusion,” Nefeli repeated. As Katya explained how the lighting in the rooms worked to get the trick right, Nefeli was certain her eyes had grown to the size of coffee saucers. What if everyone was really an illusion? What if the universe did break but not when she thought it did, but earlier? She was just the only one who noticed because she has been lonely and had needed a friend. So she accidentally made the lights in the visible room brighter while looking for Cara. That made the mirage of the people she loved disappear. Because every illusion needs the right angle or lighting to work. Could she find that switch and turn the light down to low again? She didn’t know.

“It’s a really old trick.” Katya wiped the countertop to a shine and pointed to her own reflection. “See? I look like I am in two places but only one of me is here.”

Nefeli decided she already knew enough about Pepper’s Ghost so she made up an excuse of looming deadlines to head back home. The illusion theory was gaining more ground the more she thought about it. Perhaps that was the reason everyone else was still here. She didn’t need them as much as the people close to her and so there was no light cast upon them to show that they weren’t really there. Was anyone there? Was she? Nefeli was standing in the middle of the road and felt like screaming but then everyone who was or wasn’t there would think there was something wrong with her—a different something than what was actually wrong with her so she put her head down and picked up her pace.

On the fourth day Katya was not there. Or more accurately she was and she wasn’t. Nefeli had walked into the coffee shop with an imaginary script in her mind. She’d pretend her situation was a movie she had seen and then pick Katya’s brain on the Pepper’s Ghost theory and how theoretically someone could get out of it. Two brains were better than one and Nefeli’s brain was already reaching its limits. The minute she stepped foot inside though, she felt it. The room was slightly wrong. Nefeli wasn’t sure what was happening. Her senses had grown sharper perhaps. Recognized a familiar pattern. She walked straight to the counter and asked the short guy in the too-big shirt about Katya and he stopped in his tracks for a moment. He looked around, as lost as Nefeli.

“She was right next to me a minute ago,” he said while peeking at the back where the kitchen was. “She’s taking out the trash probably. Can I get you something?”

Nefeli nodded and placed her usual order. She sat by the counter and waited for Katya even though she knew Katya was Elsewhere. She sipped her coffee and got up couple of times to ask the guy if Katya had returned and every time he was just as surprised to not find Katya by his side. That was the confirmation Nefeli needed, that and that feeling of wrongness. Katya was and wasn’t really here. Nefeli’s presence was pushing her away from this reality but Katya was still here for everyone else. She realized she didn’t have Katya’s phone number—they hadn’t known each other long enough—and she felt a weird relief because she would be tempted to text her and go through the same motions as with everyone else all over again and that wasn’t healthy anymore.

No more, she thought. No more.

From: CaraMia1990@mailbuddy.gr
To: Nefeli Galliatsou Nefnef_baby@lyons-edu.org
July 20 2015, 12:03 am
Subject: I worry

When I said you could call me anytime, I meant it. I don’t really know what’s going on in your life right now, we’ve only exchanged a few DMs on socials, but whatever it is I know you can get through it.

I am sorry I snapped at you at the bus stop. You have to admit it was a pretty weird situation and I was a nervous mess that day. I was thinking mostly about myself when I should be remembering that other people go through their own stuff.

Remember that day, it was someone’s birthday, yours or mine I am unsure, when we tried to eat the freaking candles off the cake? You told me they were made of the most delicious candy but all I tasted was wax. It was hilarious and embarrassing and we picked bits of candle from our teeth for a week. I pretended I believed you but I only half-did and went along anyway. Because that’s what you needed at the moment. Someone to believe you. I can’t promise you I will believe everything you say but I’ll try if you let me.

Please let me. Or at least send me a message that you’re still holding on.

Love,

Cara

Nefeli moved through the world like a shadow. Fast and immaterial, trying to leave everything as undisturbed as possible. When she had to go out for the occasional grocery shopping, she avoided chatting with the person buying the box of pasta next to her, with the fishmonger at the corner, with the cashier at the bakery. Sometimes she didn’t feel like going out at all and subsisted on Antonis’s pre-made meals and the occasional gyro he brought home from work. The fewer people she pushed to Elsewhere, the better. But sometimes she needed to go out, to listen to people’s chatter, the sound of their feet on the pavement, the marble floors, the grass. The restaurants and the bars in the afternoon were packed with people, old and young. Big groups of friends sitting around a tiny table, trying not to bump each other’s knees and dissolving into laughter moments later. She ate it all up because she needed to know someone was still there. But she never interacted with anyone for fear of breaking the illusion. She felt like a spy overhearing conversations in a strange world. A lonely spy in a lonely place.

From: Nefnef_baby@lyons-edu.org
To: Cara Hasani CaraMia1990@mailbuddy.gr
August 15 2015, 1:00 pm
Subject: The world is empty

Dear Cara,

Thank you for your honesty, my friend. Not everyone is like you and I mean it in the best of ways.

You know what day it is. It’s the day of the Assumption of Virgin Mary’s body. The day that Athens becomes a ghost town. If you turn on your TV right now, you’ll see videos of empty streets baking in the sun. The absence of sound in a city that houses more than three million people is astonishing. Then you’ll catch the same vanished people jostling against each other on a beach somewhere in Greece, the on-site reporters asking about the weather. Others you’ll find in Tinos or other holy places, praying for this miracle or that (perhaps I should be following their example).

This is how it feels being me right now. I constantly live in a void and there is nowhere to turn. The blinds on the windows are always closed. Where has everyone gone? For you the answer is straightforward. For me it’s more complicated.

When my body finds the strength to reunite with my spirit even for a little bit, I will message you again.

Your oldest friend,

Nefeli

Antonis: Dude, log into the fucking game. U can do it. I believe in u.

It was at one of her lowest points that Nefeli shambled one morning into the living room to find the bags of chips resting on the couch. When she was feeling down, she liked to huddle in the couch under the blanket and leave the window half-open just to get a glimpse of the people rushing outside.

The flavors were BBQ, oregano, and vinegar. Nefeli scrunched her nose at the idea of the last one, but she took out her phone and texted Antonis.

Nefeli: I know what you’re doing. Thanks. Why vinegar though?

Antonis: Sorry, it was a late-night run. I thought you wanted all the chips!

Antonis: Will you please, please, log into the game?

Nefeli sighed.

Nefeli: Fine, but after I’ve had my coffee.

FangGirl: Hey, I’m here. What’s going on?
Hauntcules: Finally! Stay right there! I am coming!

Nefeli couldn’t go anywhere. Once she opened TinyCastle™ two things happened: first, the room filled with the indigo hues of the game’s graphics, taking her back to the first day she realized there was something wrong with the world. With her world. And two, she remembered she had been stuck in a rosebush the last time she had been there. She ditched the controller and connected the keyboard to send a “telepathic” in-game message to Antonis to come and get her out.

The bushes seemed to be faring quite well since she last saw them, as opposed to Nefeli herself. The rose buds had grown little mouths and two rows of tiny needle-teeth and were now trying to eat her.

“Hey, cut it out!” she yelled at the screen and instantly felt weird talking to herself. But what was wrong with that? In a way it was liberating.

And then she saw Antonis in the game. Not the ghost avatar with the trailing sheet, the evil red eyes, and the mischievous smile Antonis had chosen as an avatar when they were playing. It was a tiny avatar of her brother, tall and lanky, with long hands and a slight hunch from years of trying to see her eye-to-eye. Nefeli had no idea up until that time that a silly game avatar could make you cry. But it did. The avatar made a barely noticeable movement that to Nefeli seemed like breathing and there was a gust of wind every few seconds that shuffled Antonis’s curly hair like in real life.

She did. Nefeli realized how much she had needed to see everyone’s face and if this was the closest she could get, she’d take it for now. There had been texts, DMs, and emails from her family and friends the past few weeks and even though they were worried, and kind, and a little sad, there was always something in them that would remind Nefeli that she was not believed. They did try to pretend they believed her but it was obvious they didn’t. Her experience was hers and hers only.

This time playing the game wasn’t such a slog. It was comforting in a way she couldn’t appreciate before. She got to meet people she hadn’t seen in ages, like Antonis’s high school friends. She went skull-digging with them. She even befriended a couple of new neighboring critters. It turned out Antonis was a minor tycoon in the game, a proper teethillionaire, and although he couldn’t transfer her his teeth, he bought stuff with them and helped turn her tiny castle into a mini version of their apartment. She even got her own Halloween costume that looked like her real self. She needed everything to look normal even if the game itself wasn’t meant to be normal. If she could see it maybe she could feel it too.

Ever since she had returned to the game, Nefeli kept catching herself daydreaming that everyone would just give up on the outside world and stay with her around the clock. She found herself feeling abandoned every time Antonis had to go to work, even though she had to work as well. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could just all beam themselves inside the game and have fun and leave their corporeal forms behind? According to her Pepper’s Ghost theory, they were not really there anyway. So, wouldn’t it be nice if they just stayed in the game? Wouldn’t it be fun?

That’s why it hit extra hard when she got all the messages. Her dad sent her a short, scared text about having lost Nefeli’s mom for a week and was he losing his mind too? Was there collectively something wrong with his family in a psychosomatic way?

Nefeli felt anger burning on her cheeks and texted: There’s something wrong with all of us. We aren’t listening to each other. Please don’t stop texting Mom. She needs you.

Mom was sorry too but only because she didn’t know how to fix things. She was even sorrier she hadn’t realized what kind of fixing was needed or she would have done it. Nefeli didn’t know what she could say to her, so she wrote: Sadly, Mom, you’re not an astrophysicist. You did nothing wrong. I love you.

Her long-lost high school friends texted her asking for tips and tricks to beat this.

She texted: There is no beating this. I am sorry but I am as lost as the first day. Get yourselves some chocolate because this will be brutal.

Nefeli emailed Cara before her oldest-ex-newfound friend got the chance, saying: I guess phone calls are out of the question now for both of us. But if you find the time in this chaos you can email me anytime. This time I will always reply. You are still my oldest friend. To make a point she attached a photo of Cara’s infamous eighth birthday party when she and Nefeli ate the little pink swirly candles.

Then she sat on the couch and turned on the news. The confused mess of the news anchor as he was trying to contact the on-site reporter was pitiful. Perhaps because they shared a bond with the news anchor they were now lost to each other. It was not one place where all of this was happening. Nefeli read post after post on public forums and she finally decided to add her story. She couldn’t really claim she was the patient-zero in this but she did share what little she knew. She even mentioned the term Loneliness Universe that became instantly viral. Everyone felt like this now. Trapped in loneliness like bugs in resin.

Antonis managed to somehow get the whole family in the game and that helped a little. Her brother was surprisingly the most level-headed one in this situation. Dad became a swamp-monster, complete with moss growing out of his ears and nose. Mom on the other hand turned into a gigantic spider. At first, nobody knew what to do with themselves in the game, but Antonis gave them a project. They would build a castle for the family. Just like the time they tried to raise a giant sandcastle on a beach in Crete but there was too much water and it kept collapsing. This time they’d do it right. As grim as it sounded, it was the closest they had been in years and Nefeli could not shake the urge to visit a beach and stick her toes in the warm mud.

From: CaraMia1990@mailbuddy.gr
To: Nefeli Galliatsou Nefnef_baby@lyons-edu.org
September 5 2015, 1:35 am
Subject: I am lonely

This sucks, Nefeli. I didn’t know someone could feel like this. Everything feels nonsensical and a little fluid. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you at first. How could I? I don’t believe myself right now. I don’t know how to find anyone. I miss my family and my boyfriend. I haven’t told you about him yet. I was waiting until the time we’d meet (lol). Now it’s too late. He sleeps in the same bed where I am typing this email from right now and yet I can’t see him, touch him, or smell him. I only see the ripples the sheets make sometimes. They hold the shape of him. The soft outline of his body and I could swear the ripples change every night. Can you believe it? Of course you can.

I feel immaterial, like the wind or the froth of the waves. Or I just might be delirious. I haven’t slept in a couple of days.

I never asked about you though. Even through our instant messages I didn’t seem curious about your life and I am sorry about that. It’s because I would prefer to talk about important things face to face, so I could see you crack that sideways smile of yours as you told me your whole life story. But I am asking now. Do you have someone in your life that you miss in that way? Even if you don’t I hope you know that you have me. Only one email away.

I loved that picture of us by the way. I didn’t know you had it. The funny thing is I would gladly eat a birthday candle just to go back in time and space and join you again. But maybe it’s not wise to wish for more scrambled-up physics.

Tell you what. I’ll make a project for us. I’ll make myself go out and take pictures of the places we used to visit as kids. Then I’ll tell you everything that happened this past two decades. I need this or else I feel my brain will turn into goop. Please do the same for me even though I have never been to Athens. I want to know all your usual spots.

I have already forgiven you for the letters. There is nothing to be mad about.

Love you,

Cara

Loneliness Universe was now the standard term of each new iteration of the universe, when someone lost someone new. There wasn’t really an official scientific term for this particular multiverse or series of bubble universes. Scientists published scores of perspective and opinion articles but a particular one caught on, one that described observable and unobservable universes, where observable is the subjective universe each person objectively exists in and observes the rest of humanity from and unobservable are the parallel universes where the individual projects themselves onto so that others observe them but they are not physically there.

All of this until the moment of rapture or dimming happens, where the individual stops projecting themselves onto an unobservable universe and that’s when people assume a bubble universe has appeared, but in reality, they were never really there. Which to Nefeli’s ears sounded like a super complicated way to describe Pepper’s Ghost but whatever.

And then the world started drifting further apart.

It started small. First as a glitch in the game. The rose bushes were still trying to eat Nefeli but the avatars of Antonis, Mom, Dad, and the rest stopped moving for a few seconds. It was the closest thing Nefeli had seen to silence, nothingness, the end. Then the slowed down pace spread to the entire internet, phone texts, and emails. The theories started popping up immediately (as immediately as they could have appeared in this new pace). Everyone agreed on one thing. The universes were somehow moving away from each other. Like charges repelling.

After that, silence. This time because the world turned inward. People needed the precious time left before everything was lost to say their goodbyes. Some scientists offered a glimmer of hope: they said that this was a cycle of sorts. Like the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. Only this must happen every one million years instead of one. Soon it would all be over. All anyone needed to do was hang on a little longer. The hope was so small it was barely there, but it was the only thing people wanted to think about.

Nefeli and her family lit a bright bonfire in TinyCastle™, a virtual BBQ with friends which very much felt like the last family dinner they all had together before Nefeli left Greece to pursue her MFA and came back a couple of years later. Meaning, they all pretended they would meet again. They had to. Hopefully in less than a couple of years. Hopefully very soon. It’s amazing what people can adapt to when need arises. How so little can suddenly become so much.

Nefeli took a picture of Six Sins, the now-closed goth club she drank her first cocktail in when she was nineteen. It would probably be the last picture she’d be able to send Cara for who knew how long. She used to daydream about bumping into Cara in that club by accident, in a scenario where Cara had come to Athens to study. But that would be just another reality that never came to be.

From: Nefnef_baby@lyons-edu.org
To: Cara Hasani CaraMia1990@mailbuddy.gr
September 22 2015, 11:00 am
Subject: A passing

Let’s play a game.

Not like the one my whole family now lives in. Let’s play one inside our minds. Like we used to do back in the day.

Pretend you remember this picture I am sending you. Remember it as in, you’ve been there with me when we were in college. You left one afternoon and took the bus to Athens just to have a drink with me in that goth club I could not stop talking about. I called you nuts because you’d have to catch the 6 a.m. bus back to Korinthos but you just stared at me and giggled, without a care in the world.

Now imagine it again with all the pictures I sent you and I’ll do it too with all the ones you sent me. That’s how we’ll measure the passage of time. And hopefully by the time we run out of made-up stories the world will be one again, and I won’t have to concern myself with the laws of physics for the rest of my life. I need to believe that this is a winter season and that spring is within reach.

Our memories together were a handful of overexposed Polaroids my mom took of us, all at various places. Now we have added ours to the canon. Perhaps if I look at those pictures really hard. If I plunge myself into the texture of those memories, the creature that runs the universe(s) will believe I mean it this time and will stop drawing us apart. These pictures are my last hope, Cara. And I won’t stop looking at them—at you, at me, at our families, at our past—until I can dream of a future again. Until something good fucking happens. I will still be here.

Still waiting.

Love you always,

Your oldest friend

(Editors’ Note: “Loneliness Universe” is read by Matt Peters on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 58B.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© 2024 Eugenia Triantafyllou