Perfect.

Just perfect.

The fleeting thought enters my mind unbidden like a shaft of sunlight piercing a cloud, the illumination and the warmth I feel dispelling my despondency, just for a moment. That's all my life is now, moments.

Moments imagined, moments relived, and this, a moment borrowed, but not mine to keep.

A little girl races from tree to tree, kicking up the freshly cut grass and the first autumn leaves. Her laughter is infectious, not a care in the world does she have, even as her mother gently chides her from a park bench for ruining her outfit.

As her daughter forges on, lost in her merriment, the woman takes her seat, smiling but with a sadness in her eyes that seems as permanent as the scar on her skin. For a moment, I am consumed with her beauty, though I know full well she never regarded herself as anything special.

The cool breath of the season rustles her wavy red hair ever so slightly, as she wraps her arms around her waist. Her daughter loops back and zooms between us. Her eyes, following her, seem to linger on me. I almost forget, for one moment, as I always do.

But that scar...

Suddenly, though impossible, I feel the chill, as I'm drawn back to reality, or at least my own personal hell. The woman's glance probably only passed over me, or perhaps she was staring into space for a moment. For, to her, that's all that's in the place I stand, empty space, a void.

She stands, arms still clasped about her, a shield from the cold, something that I lack. My eyes trail her every step as she ambles out of sight, following her errant daughter. She disappears behind a stand of sprawling oaks, and the moment ends as painfully as it began. The sweetness of it, which I crave, has all but vanished, and I'm left with the icy bitterness.

I begin to absorb more of my surroundings as the seconds tick away since they left. The stands of oak and beech, the little lake overlooked by the grand manor house on the hill, the swans swimming in contentment as the sun slips below the horizon. There are certainly differences, but it's still much too close.

I can't bear to be here any longer. I feel the weight of this reality crushing down on me because it is much too real. The memories so fresh and excruciatingly raw. Flashes now. Fire everywhere. The smell of smoke, burning flesh. Explosions.

Screams...the screaming!

I buckle to my knees. Face in my hands, begging for it not to be real. All reason escapes me. I could end all of this with a single verbal command, but I can't. I'm back there in that hellhole where I lost everything.

The rage, the anguish, I'm blinded by them. It is only with Samantha's piercing scream of my name that I realise that I am screaming, too.

Silence descends but for our laboured breath. I'm out, but I still feel cold.

I don't look at Samantha at first. I don't really see anything. My eyes are partially closed, as if I'd accidently looked at the sun. I wait until the trembling passes, for the throbbing in my ears to fade.

As I open my eyes, I can feel the wet on my face from the tears. My scalp stings from where I dug in my nails. It's only now that I look at her that I feel her hand grasping my shoulder firmly. That more than her voice is drawing me back.

Back? To what? This half-life?

I'm calm now, I think, though cold might be a better description. The emotions that had erupted from within are now firmly encased in the hard shell that is all anyone else gets to see, except, of course, for Samantha. However, that was not my choice. I would gladly shield this part of me away, forgo all human comfort, the endless pity, repress all the pain.

But I can't forget my past, not for more than a small while. My memories are only pain, and pain begets pain.

That is why I am kneeling in the sensorium, a crumpled, tear-streaked mess of emotional and physical self-harm. I endure it all though, again and again, many more times than even Samantha is aware of, for that brief moment of tranquillity when all is forgotten, and I can see them again.

"Jordan, this has to stop." Says Samantha, as softly as she can manage, but I can detect the fatigue in her voice. Perhaps it's from the screaming, but I know some of it is the strain of these interventions. A part of me, deep within, feels guilt, but it is buried under a longing for something I can never have back, my old life, my family.

I clasp my hands together and rest my chin upon them. I don't immediately answer. I never do. Perhaps, I believe for a moment that I could lie to her and to myself. As always though, I respond, "You know I can't do that."

Normally, I would abide more of her counselling, but not today. Today was just that much more harrowing, and I can't pick apart the experience just now. I jerk up and swiftly make to walk off, but she rises from her crouched position and says, "I know why you chose this one." I freeze, but I do not respond. She continues. "It's because she's alone there. She's missing a 'you'."

I respond, "What's your point?"

"You still can't go to her, Jordan. You know that, so why continue to torment yourself like this?"

"If torment is the price of just glimpsing them again for the shortest of times, then I am perfectly willing to pay. Regardless, what choices I make aren't up to you, or anyone else for that matter." I said that with a little more acid than was really necessary.

She replies firmly in kind, "Well, you can certainly choose self-abuse here in the sensorium all you want. It's clear I can't stop you, but I can't always be here to rescue you."

"I never asked for your help." I reply peevishly.

"It's not all about you, Jordan. I'm sorry if that seems harsh, but you're here for a reason. We all are."

"Well, until you or our great leader can figure out exactly what that reason is, I'm going to carry on as I am, with my own business as I see fit. I suggest you try doing the same. Aren't there not some invisible creatures you could be proving exist?"

At that, she blanches. Whatever our disagreements, she doesn't deserve mockery, and I know I've gone too far. She rushes past me and leaves the sensorium without looking at me, without another word. The old me, having been such an ass, would have immediately admitted as much and apologised. Instead, I just stand there, motionless, lacking expression, as even the heightened emotions from just moments before drain away.

A more familiar feeling sets in once more; numbness, as the heavy slab I keep on my emotions slides back in to place. None of the burning rage or the piercing grief, none of the defensiveness or venom, just a coldness, a winter that never passes.

I linger in the sensorium a while longer. The temptation is ever present to keep trying. Today has been the closest I've ever come, a place where they exist and I don't. Yet Samantha was right about one thing, I really can't go to them, just as I couldn't all the times before. This time, however, the only hang-up is the laws of reality itself. I still haven't devised a workaround for the single greatest obstacle to my plan. I know there must be a solution, but perhaps it is beyond my particular knowledge. After all, how am I, a military man, ever supposed to devise a way to exist where I do not belong.

I don't know when I decided to leave. I suppose the pain was just raw enough that the idea of diving right back in repulsed me, for now at least. I wander the corridors on this floor, meandering, not bothering to keep a straight course or maintain a constant pace. To an outside observer, I probably seem like a drunkard, stopping and starting, staring into space, and then unsteadily darting off as if something just came to mind.

I do have a destination in mind, however. I'm just in no particular hurry to get there. It's not as if I have a pressing schedule. I round a corner and amble along the last stretch of corridor before coming to an open doorway that leads into a room of glass walls.

This is the viewing deck. Every floor has one. Some even have one on each side of the building, and several are grand affairs with seating to accommodate a few dozen people at once. I have a preference for this one, as it's somewhat cosier, and I rarely find it occupied. It also still affords a good view from the building's west-facing side, unobstructed by the landing pads on the east side.

I enter cautiously. I'm not in the mood for company and if someone is there, maybe I can do a quick one-eighty before they notice me. To my relief, it's empty. I promptly take the middle seat of a row of five and lean forward, resting my arms on my lap.

A few moments pass before I take in the scene. I'm on one of the higher floors and yet, the Douglas firs are towering above my head, accompanied by somewhat smaller red cedars and hemlocks. I can just glimpse the understorey of bigleaf and vine maples, showing vibrant fall foliage.

Peering through the dense canopy, I can just about see the open waters of the Georgia Strait. If it were a clear day, I could probably discern the coast of Vancouver Island and if I were also in an east-facing viewing deck, I'd be able to see the peaks of the North Shore Mountains.

I laugh to myself, remembering the geeky partiality to geography I harboured in my youth, and how meaningless it is here. Of all the vistas that pass by these glass panes, none ever belongs to anyone, so none of them really have any names for islands or mountains or even the trees that grow there.

These names for places and things come from where I'm from, not this place.

I've been here for seven months now, and I discovered this viewing deck about six weeks after my arrival. Since then, I've come here for a few minutes to many, many hours every day and in that time, I have seen evidence of civilization twice.

The first was some vast necropolis or some other spiritual site, clearly long abandoned and almost completely overgrown, like Angkor Wat. Yet I knew it was of Native American origin from the broken pillars that more closely resembled totem poles. It was impressive to behold, to see something on the scale of Chichen Itza amongst some of largest trees in existence. I remember it being the first time something distracted me from all my personal woes.

The second time was only a few weeks ago, and it was far less imposing. It was merely a collection of rundown cabins and lumber mills. I even saw a broken horse-drawn cart half hidden by shrubbery. There were the fallen trunks of gargantuan trees, decaying in place, as their descendants grew about them, rearing to retake the clear-cut land.

I knew a settlement once existed in this place, well, as I knew it. It was called Gastown, and it became the nucleus of the greatest city in the region. It seemed as if in this place, time had stood still and 'this' Gastown had only been abandoned a few decades at most. I pondered that conundrum for a time. Yet it only drew me back to brooding upon the fate of the city I knew and of my own home, half a world away from here.

Did the crisis escalate?

Did the Union become involved?

Is there even a world to go back to if I wanted?

A number of times I have been tempted to use the sensorium to find out the answers to these questions that haunt me still. Yet nothing could ever outstrip my desperation to find somewhere where I could be with my family again. I keep what time and strength I have for that alone. My home no longer matters. There's nothing left for me there.

I scan the scene again to make sure there's nothing I missed, any sign of human presence. I see nothing but great conifers, an autumnal kaleidoscope of maples, and the discreet movements of wary forest creatures. This place is just like the vast majority of those I've seen for over five months, no people, no variations, except perhaps for the distribution of the trees. This is definitely a couple of minutes kind of day.

I stand and make for a swift exit.

"I suppose you're right. This one's more of the same, isn't it?"

I freeze. There's no mistaking that voice, though I've heard it only a handful of times. Our great leader, Marc, sitting, well, I don't know, he may very well be standing, but the directionality of his voice gives the impression that he's in the seat furthest from me, two seats to the left of where I had been.

I find it hard to choke down my irritation. "How long have you been here?" I ask.

"Longer than you." He replies, and with some implication in his tone that I don't care to analyse right at this moment.

"I don't suppose you considered announcing yourself?"

"Well, given how you entered, I got the impression you wanted to be alone."

"I wasn't alone."

"As far as you were concerned, you were. Anyhow, I'd planned to quietly exit if you'd remained any longer, but you got up in such a hurry, it made me wonder what urgent matter that you could possibly have to attend to."

I bite back my anger just barely, replying, "Nothing, Marc, absolutely nothing. I was just rushing back to my quarters."

"You mean that place where you only sleep? It's three in the afternoon."

He is right, of course. I only see my quarters for the couple of hours of sleep per day that I allow myself. Sleep only brings nightmares of a reality the memories of which I can barely suppress in my waking hours. Indeed, just a little while ago, I failed to do so in dramatic fashion. I have but one dream that only rarely drowns out the horrors of my recollections, and that is of my wife and child in my arms again.

I hear the faint ruffling of fabric on fabric that alerts me that Marc has moved. His footfalls seem to move away from me towards the glass. There is silence for an overlong period, and I'm working myself up to just leave, but the second I look towards the doorway, he speaks. "Despite the near changelessness, do you ever wonder at it?"

"Wonder at what?"

"Why is this place such as it is? Why no civilization, why not even people? Why are such things the exception rather than the rule?"

"It's only human to wonder, but that's as far as I go."

"The whole purpose of this place is to go further, to discern the differences that have led places such as this down a different fork in the road. You've come to understand so little about this place, but I thought you at least knew this."

"I do understand your purpose..."

"Our purpose."

"Since when?" I retort testily.

"Since you stumbled through Gate 22-96, burned, broken, howling in pain. You are part of this place now, Jordan."

"Screw that, I never asked to come here."

"None of us did, but we arrived anyway. Most of us have come to accept that there is some greater purpose as to why we were all chosen. We've also come to terms with some hard truths."

"Such as?"

"That our homes no longer exist, at least not for us. That the people we left behind are lost to us, for good."

I am incensed. How dare he write off my suffering. How dare he, someone who barely knows me, imply that I need to move on. It is all the more infuriating that I can't even look him in the eye or even know where this contemptuous spectre stands. I lurch forward regardless, stabbing at the air with my outstretched finger. I reply, "You do not get to tell me how to feel, and you don't get to tell me what to do about those feelings either! You're not even fully real."

That last was a juvenile jab to be sure. I'm certain that Marc would see it as such. At this point, I don't really care. I never asked for any of this, and all I want to do is escape into a place where I can be with my loved ones. It's so tantalisingly possible, and I'm convinced all that stands in my way is the technical, the exactly how I accomplish it.

In all the seven months I've been here, I have stood in no one's way, in fact, I've made a point of making myself scarce, and I have consumed no more resources than I am allotted. I'm sure I've actually underused my food and water rations. So, I cannot stand here and allow this bare presence of a man to scold me, or tell me what I ought to do.

Proving himself as impervious as he is invisible, he says, "You are not one to judge when it comes to realism, Jordan. You are quite right that I have no say in how you grieve. Yet the status quo is unacceptable to the Institute at large. You are a drain on resources, and you offer no contribution in return. You take for selfish, albeit heart-rending reasons, but we cannot endlessly support a personal endeavour doomed to failure."

"I have explained my reasoning before and..."

"And you cannot offer a viable way to make it work."

"I just need time. Maybe if you'd help me, you'd be rid of me quicker."

His voice sounding closer, as if for emphasis, he replies, "Jordan, this is what I mean when I say you've barely scratched the surface here. Do you not see that what you are working towards has been one of the goals of the Institute for as long as I have resided here, perhaps longer if there were others before myself. Believe me, many methods have been tried and tested, yours among them. Had any succeeded, we would not be having this conversation. You'd be where you want to be." I sense he has turned back to the window again from the timbre of his voice as he continues. "Besides, it is not my desire to be rid of you. Like I said, you're here for a reason."

"One you cannot fathom, I imagine."

"Certainly not at the moment, but your situation could change, you know."

"How so?"

"As I've suggested, perhaps show an interest in this place beyond helping yourself..."

"So, what? Ask not what the Institute can do for you, ask what you can do for the Institute?"

"You know that particular paraphrase had occurred to me, but I thought it rather pompous, so I decided to be more direct."

"Well, consider yourself heard loud and clear. If you'll excuse me..."

I finally work up the will to just leave. I turn my back and move hastily into the corridor, straight ahead to the central elevator. "Nothing awaits you down this path but further misery, Jordan. That I can promise you." His voice trails away, as he calls after me. The hint of pity is jarring after the sardonic nature of our conversation.

He can't dissuade me. Not now. I know I'm on the verge of something.

Time. All I need is a little more time.