Three Word Wednesday: Simulator

Grip;  Prefer; Thread

"Would you prefer the flashlight or the headlamp?" the helper-bot asks in its pre-programmed voice. 

He'd prefer to be home, all things considered, but he pushes his glasses back up his nose and holds out his hand. 

"Headlamp, please," he says. There is a whirr of hydraulics as the 'bot lifts its arm and then the headlamp falls into his outstretched hand. "Thanks," he says, pushing himself out from under the busted simulator and adjusting the lamp against his forehead. 

"Why do you talk to that thing?" a voice says from the corner, "you know it's not really talking back." The man who is underneath the simulator is silent, his hands occupied with the long stretch of wiring he is methodically pulling from the machine's insides. 

"You can't ignore me forever, Felix," the voice says. There is a note of anger threading its way through the words but the man beneath the simulator does not answer. 

"Pass me the 3/4 inch clamp, please," he says instead, directing his request to the helper-bot that is still hovering.  

"Felix!" the voice yells, the word barely audible over the noise of the helper-bot rolling across the workshop and returning with the clamp.  

"I'm not listening to you," Felix says, his voice muffled by the bulk of the simulator he is repairing. His hands are tangled in the machine's cabling and he grunts slightly as he pulls on the ones he needs. 

"You're not allowed to ignore me," the voice says, getting closer. "You're the one that came to me, you're  the one who didn't want to come home alone." The voice is quiet, then it sighs. Felix doesn't take his attention from the delicate cable splicing his hands are doing. "If you'd just left everything alone we wouldn't be in this mess." 

Felix tilts his head back, the headlamp's beam reflecting off the bottom of the simulator and shining through the two bare feet standing near the sim's rounded edge. The feet shift slightly as Felix pulls himself from beneath the simulator.  

When he is standing, he pulls the headlamp from his forehead and flips the switch that turns it off. Felix can still see through the figure that is now crossing its arms and glaring at him from beneath delicately arched eyebrows. 

The girl is mostly translucent, the forms of the table and tools behind her vaguely discernible through her body. She is barefoot and bare-armed, wearing a knee-length dress that is swaying slightly in a wind that is not present in Felix's workroom. When he pushes past her to put the headlamp on the table, his arm passes through hers. The only indication  he has that she is not a figment of his imagination is the short crack of electricity he feels when he presses past her shoulder. It makes the hairs on his arms stand on end but Felix doesn't change his expression, setting the headlamp down on the table and collecting a screwdriver. 

"Felix," she says. Her voice sounds as if it is coming from far away and her chin-length hair is blowing in the same wind as her dress.  

"Sanri," he says, crouching down with the screwdriver gripped tightly in his left hand.  

"I want to go home, Felix," Sanri says. She sits on the floor, resting her head against the side of the broken simulator and watches as Felix slowly screws in the simulator's face plate.  

"We all want something we can't have," Felix says around the last two screws he is holding in his mouth.
  

Sanri frowns and stands. Felix thinks he can see grass poking between her bare toes and finds himself wondering where she would be standing if she were not stuck in his workshop. 

"You invaded our home," Sanri says finally. "You convinced me you weren't real. You told me you were lonely, that you needed me to come back with you to prove that you were alive..." She trails off and when Felix looks up at her, her eyes are heavy with the promise of tears. 

Felix puts the screwdriver down next to his knee and leans against the side of the simulator. He holds his hand out and Sanri collapses into a puddle of girl at his side. The static-shock of her presence doesn't make him flinch and he puts his arm around her shaking shoulders. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend she's really there. 

For all he knows she is. 

"I didn't know the simulated worlds were real ones," Felix says finally, fixing a blank-eyed stare against the back wall. It is covered in charts and schematics, traceries of nebulas and rudimentary maps of not-so-imaginary worlds. 

"Of course they are," Sanri sniffles. "Everything is real." 

"But I didn't know that," Felix insists. 

"And now you don't know how to send me back," Sanri says, her voice small and resigned. 

"Yeah," Felix says, closing his eyes to block out her crying. 

They sit in silence, the room buzzing as the simulator warms up. The helper-bot is quiet in its corner, arm outstretched. 

"Can we try one more time?" Sanri asks, her voice a whisper. It is so quiet, Felix can almost pretend she didn't say anything, that her voice was lost in the electric whine of the computer booting up, the simulator's engine humming to life. 

Felix opens his eyes and stares at the far wall. Sanri is an electric presence against his side, the simulator that brought her here is an electric presence at his back. 

"Yes," he says.