[i]Click. Click. Click.[/i]

There’s something off about the noise, of footsteps-against-tiles, but, like some half-remembered dream, it keeps slipping away from me.

"….can provide." The doctor walking at my side looks over at me.

I shake my head. "Could you repeat that again, please?"

We’re walking down a corridor, with white-washed walls and a tiled floor. Smells like a hospital. The overpowering citrine smell of well-starched sheets, and coats, and polished steel, and food on trays, and needles, and wires, and – 

"It’s a nice place," says the doctor. "The best care we can provide."

Of course it is. I try and focus. A crash. Blood. So much blood. The man next to me is still talking.

"…of it?"

He catches the look on my face, and pre-empts the question this time. “I asked what you thought of it? The machine? It’s an option, you understand. Preserve her consciousness. A world of her own.”

The images won’t go away. Windscreen and bone. A woman, screaming. The thick smell of acrid smoke. “There was a car accident…” I murmur.

He nods hurriedly. "Yes, a terrible affair. But I’m afraid time is rather, well, of the essence, you see. Too long, and there’s nothing left for us to, ah, retrieve." His tone is urgent, his eyes alert. He doesn’t break his stride as he speaks. It’s a long hallway.

[i]Click. Click. Click.[/i]

I think for a moment. "You can ask her, can’t you? Put her in a sim, ask her there, switch her off if she refuses?"

"We, ah, could, yes. But I’m afraid that would involve informing her that she is, in fact, in a sim, the knowledge of which we wouldn’t be able to, ah, redact, so to speak." The man licks his lips, words dancing on the edge of something.

I keep walking. It’s a long hallway. "I’m not seeing a problem."

"How would you handle the knowledge that you were the only, ah, real person in the world, hmm? The only real [i]thing[/i] full-stop, as it were? And not just now, not just today, but for the rest of existence?"

“But I –”

The man in the coat pre-empts the question again. “As far as she’d know, you would have perished in the accident. Over time, I imagine, she would, ah, forget.”
[i]
Click. 

Click. 

Click.
[/i]
Understanding dawns on me, slowly, subtly, slotting into place as I struggle to formulate a question. And then it settles, silently, and there’s nothing left but a calm consideration. I keep walking.
 
It’s a long hallway.

"How long now?"

The man in the white coat – if he is, in fact, a man – stares off into space, his eyes distance, listening for something. To something. "Two or three minutes, give or take."

Not long. "And at the end?"

The man pauses, licks his lips. "The, ah, end?" he repeats.

"Of the hallway. Beyond the door, if there is one."

I watch his face change as it clicks for him, too. There’s something there for a moment – is it pity? Respect? Some grim resolution? – until he looks away, and when he looks back, his expression is softer, more kind.
 
"Oh. I see. That, I’m afraid, is the subject of a vast amount of, ah, speculative literature, on which I’m afraid I am not, as it were, an expert." His tone is apologetic, and awkward.

Silence falls, save for my footfalls.

[i]Click.
 
Click.
 
Click.[/i]

"For what it’s worth," he adds, "I’m sorry."

"We were going to the beach," I say. "That’s all it was meant to be. A Saturday morning off. That’s all."

The doctor slows down, matching my pace. "I’m sorry, I truly am."

"The kids –"

"Will be looked after. As will your wife."

I nod. We’re almost there.

“I’ll miss her."

"As she, no doubt, I must say, will miss you."

I pause in-front of the door. Two steps, maybe three.

"Are you sure?"

I look at it, up and down. It’s a simple affair. White coat, silver handle. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting. Something ornamental, perhaps. Something symbolic.

I suppose the hallway is symbol enough.

I nod. The man in the white coat looks me up and down, nods, and, with one last sad smile, vanishes in a blur of pixels.

I step forward, towards the door, single footsteps clicking on the white tiled floor.

[i]Click. 

Click. 

Cli-[/i]