The woman in white took off running down the beach. The blue flowers in her hair fell out and floated like feathers caught on the breeze out into the water. Fisher stood for a moment, uncertain of what to do, until suddenly the snaked coiled around his arm slithered to life again and whispered to him, “Ssss… Follow her!” Fisher stared at it for a second, blinked and took off running. He didn’t bother to try and figure out how TOTU was transmitting instructions back through to him through this reptilian avatar. And it didn’t really matter.

He caught up to the woman in white. She turned rapidly, her hair flying out in the air and fell into his arms. “My hero,” she said, trying to kiss him. Fisher turned and it landed on his cheek. She seemed to be operating on a script still from an episode of The Darlings but he didn’t recognize it. He rarely watched it anymore himself, as his training had inculcated the characters so deep into his psyche that he understood them personally. In fact, the training methods TOTU devised for use on the techs formed the genesis for the of programming techniques used on the inhabitants as well.

Fisher held the woman in white lightly by each of her shoulders and looked into her eyes. They seemed as far away as ever. “Is this the signal problem you’ve been experiencing?” he asked her.

“What problem?” she said dreamily.

Obviously she didn’t see it that way at all. But to Fisher and to TOTU it was a problem. Through years of trial and error, they’d determined the appropriate level of character identification which inhabitants should adopt towards the characters of Prosperity Dearest and Pricely Darling. If inhabitants identified too fully with the consensciousness characters, it stagnated the simulations from which new programming was derived. They all became exactly the same. A certain amount of deviation was necessary for the survival of the cultural creative process.

The woman in white had somehow slipped too far into Prosperity’s character. Fisher had to figure out how.

“Where are we?” Fisher asked her, running down the line of protocol questions for exactly this type of situation.

“We’re in Mexico,” the woman said. She threaded her arm in his and they looked out at the setting sun.

“What are we doing here?”

“We’re on vacation, silly.” She rested her head on Fisher’s shoulder. A tiny sail boat moved in the distance, silhouetted against the orange sky.

“When are we going home?” Fisher asked.

“Shush!” she said. “Just enjoy the moment.”

Dammit, Fisher thought, glancing down at the snake wound around his other arm. Its head bobbed back and forth. It’s tongue flicked in and out. But it said nothing. Some help you are.

The woman in white sighed contentedly next to him. “Don’t you just love the ocean, darling?” she said.

At the sound of the word ‘ocean’, Fisher’s mind flashed back to the woman’s apartment, where they had stood together watching Prosperity Dearest listening intently to the sound of the sea echoed through a conch shell on the beach. Fisher pulled away from the woman in white and began scanning the beach.

“What are you looking for?” she asked with concern.

“The seashell,” Fisher said. “I want to hear the ocean.” But the beach was completely empty in every direction.

“Oh,” the woman said pensively, as if she were protecting something uncertainly. “Just be careful with it.” And all at once she produced the conch from somewhere in the folds of her dress and handed it to Fisher.

Fisher took it and held it up to his ear, expecting the effect to be instantaneous. But nothing happened. He closed his eyes and tried to enter the trance state he’d seen both Prosperity and the woman in white entering into. But he could not. Nothing happened.

“I can’t hear it,” Fisher said. “I can’t hear the ocean.”

“That’s because we’re already at the ocean, silly!”

“No, I think the shell is broken,” Fisher said, testing her. He turned it over in his hands roughly and held it up close to his eye.

“Be careful!” she said frantically.

“Ssss… smash it!” the snake whispered from his arm.

“On what?” Fisher said aloud, glancing around

The woman in white screamed and lunged for the shell. Fisher jumped back and took off running – this time away from the water instead of down the beach itself. The sand seemed to stretch on and on forever. He looked back over his shoulder and the water hadn’t gotten any farther away. There was simply no other data in the environment. Fisher slowed down to a halt as the woman in white caught up with him and lunged again.

“Watch out for the rock!” Fisher yelled in mock warning. It was his only chance.

The woman looked down a second too late and stumbled over rock the size of a football. Fisher had successfully banked on her ability to subconsciously control the environment. Without helping her up, Fisher immediately hoisted the conch shell over his head and smashed it down onto the rock. Shards of white shell splintered like shrapnel from a hand grenade and immediately the beach scene was replaced by the the woman’s comfortable country home. Fisher helped her up and laid her gingerly onto her couch.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, pushing her hair out of her face.

“Fine,” she looked at Fisher weakly. A faint smile traced her lips.

Fisher turned to the holographic television screen. A pure white egg floated against the blackness of space. The snake uncoiled from his arm and resumed its place wrapped around the egg. The symbol evaporated and was replaced by the stern visage of Pricely Darling in a white lab coat.

“You should have saved the artifact, Mr. Caldwell.

“There was no other way out…” Fisher said.

Pricely waited.

“…Sir.” Fisher sighed. He couldn’t stand all the phony formalities interacting with the Darlings demanded. They were after all, only computer programs.

“Well, we could have used it for the purposes of our simulations. You destroyed a priceless piece of property belonging to TOTU and your pay will be docked accordingly. Do you understand?”

Fisher looked at the floor angrily. “Yes… sir.”

“In any event, we will need to figure out how the inhabitant created this device.”

“I doubt she even knows, sir.” Fisher looked back at the woman in white, now sleeping lightly on the couch. “She’s pretty shaken up.”

“Well, you know what needs to be done. Please proceed to your next assignment when you’re done here.”

The screen faded back to a flat painting of a small country house.

Fisher let out a sigh, turned and knelt down next to the sleeping woman. He hated this part of his job. All any of the inhabitants had were their memories – even if they did only consist of trite television shows, propaganda and commercial programming. It seemed somehow wrong. But he had to collect the data and collect all of it. There was no way to unthread whatever had gone wrong with her from her personal memories. And anyway, she needed to be resynchronized with consensciousness.

Fisher gently placed the thumb and index finger of his right hand on either side of her left earlobe, leaned in close enough to smell her sweat and perfume, and inhaled deeply from outside the opening of her ear canal. A line of thin blue smoke issued forth and entered his lungs. Fisher closed his eyes as the signal unscrambled through his mind, transmitting through him in a pure form back to base. The woman’s memories overwhelmed him briefly and then vanished. Fisher removed the woman’s world key from his reader, wrapped her fingers around it, and exited.