Chapter 1: The Ghost in the Machine
The glow from the monitor was the only light in the room that didn’t feel tired. It illuminated a landscape of deferred ambitions: stacks of reference books with cracked spines, a 3D printer missing its extruder, a dusty guitar case propped in the corner. The air tasted of yesterday’s coffee grounds and the faint, metallic whisper of the always-on computer fan.
Mark D’s fingers rested on the cool plastic of the keyboard. On the screen, a chat window was open. Next to it, a folder on a anonymous cloud storage platform. Its existence was a fossil record, a stratigraphy of a life he’d almost lived. 4 years of messages, voice records, videos. The virtual sex-print from his twenties, typed with the frantic energy of a man who believed the world was just about to start. Confessions whispered after 2 AM, pixels carrying a weight real voices never could. Plans made and dissolved, each exchange a ghost limb he could still sometimes feel.
A new line of text had appeared, separate from the archived past, a live nerve in the old scar tissue.
Julie: This year you’re turning 40, right? Don’t worry, it’s just a number, it doesn’t change anything anymore. It’s just when you think about things from the past and realize how many years have gone by. Like, we started talking 17 years ago! We were practically kids…
He stared at the words. ‘Practically kids.’ He remembered. He’d been twenty-two, an engineering student in Paris with a head full of code and a heart wide open to any signal that felt like a connection. She was 24 in Montreal, a sharp wit he’d met in a forum where she was looking for spicy talks. Two years it took them. They met once. What a night, they didn't sleep but they also didn't fuck. She was a virgin. A sudden job offer for him across the ocean, another one for her on the other side of that same ocean. Two more years of sweaty steamy fingers online, of desperate attempt to fly over for 24 hours. Then another man, it slowed down but didn't die, then a fiance and a last few desperate attempt. Then a wedding and the quiet understanding that the window had fogged over.
He leaned back. The office chair creaked a familiar protest. He ran a hand over his stomach, softer now beneath his faded t-shirt, and felt the lines around his eyes tighten as he frowned at the screen. Forty. It wasn’t the number. It was the inventory the number forced upon you. The stable, uninspiring engineering job that paid the mortgage on a quiet house. The half-finished projects that mocked him from the shadows. The years of hidden smiles, sure—quick laughs with colleagues, the pleasant exhaustion after a weekend hike—and the unshed tears for a path not taken, a voice heard but never held. And the dead bedroom.
His fingers found the keys.
MarkD: 17 years old… wow. Sure, when you look at it that way. But some things survive the years. Kids however, I don't know — maybe a little naive, but certainly not innocent.
He hit enter before he could stop himself. It was the ghost of his younger self typing, the one who always had a quip. The man he was now watched the sent message with a slow coil of dread in his gut. This was the dance. A step into the past, a waltz with a silhouette.
Her reply will takes days if not weeks. Or at least it used to, but it came within 2 days.
JulieMar: Yes, it's true that "kids" might not have been the right term... Do you ever think about it? I like to think about it from time to time... It left its mark. Maybe more than it should have. At least, for me. It was a pleasant time to remember.
Of course he had, more often than not. It came and go, mostly along the frustration of his boring sex life and all the promises she made him. Late at night, he was sneaking to his secret folder and reading through their old conversation. Like that one time where she was suntaning in her parents yard, or this other where she took refuge in a train bathroom to satisfy her lust.
MarkD: I also like to think about it again. 'More than it should have' makes me curious… Do you think it was just a phase, or did we meet at the wrong time?
JulieMar: I'm only speaking for myself, of course, but I think the fact that I was far away and that I fantasized about you made things a little unreal. More than they should have been, because we only "saw" each other once... And yet, here I am, writing to you 17 years later. Maybe we met at the wrong time: hard to say. But it was a pleasant interlude, in any case. What do you think?
He smiled. The spark, dry and familiar, was there. It was just a flicker, buried under layers of time and other choices, but it was there. He could feel the pull of it, the easy cadence of a conversation that had once felt like the most important one in the world. His eyes drifted from the message she left to the archived logs below. He scrolled up, a decade and a half flying by in a blur of pixels. A fragment caught his eye, a promise from her, age twenty-six: “Next time. Next time You're m in Paris, it’s happening. No floods, no plagues, no job interviews. I ll come over. Just us in a hotel room, before it's too late.”
Next time had become never.
His gaze fell to the bottom right corner of the screen, to the small, cropped profile picture in her chat client. It was missing. What did she look like now? It didn't matter, he felt his sex hardening and knew that never mattered. The coil in his gut tightened.
MarkD: Maybe the reason we're still talking about it 17 years later is that the chapter never completely closed. Maybe that's also why I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we'd met at a different time.
She was typing more often. Yet they haven't been chatting live again.
JulieMar: Yes, I agree. We never really closed that chapter, even after all this time together. It would surely have been something completely different at another point in our lives. Do you think we never closed that chapter because we didn't go "all the way"?
He knew what he should do. He should make a joke. He should sign off. He should close the chat, shut down the computer, and go in his silent bedroom. He should let the ghost rest. His younger self, the explorer, the man who once typed passionate sex scene into the void of the early internet, wouldn’t have hesitated. That man was reckless. That man was gone.
Mark’s fingers moved. They didn’t feel like his own.
MarkD: Yes… There are things we haven't done… and all the things we said we ll do. That always leaves a sort of 'what if' feeling.
He sent it. The admission hung in the digital space between them, naked and dangerous. He wasn’t talking about goldfish. The days ticked by.
JulieMar: Yes, and we'll never experience them in real life. But I'll admit that sometimes, that's the part where I let my imagination run wild…
There it was. The admission, she was also still thinking of him. Physically running her fingers, exploring and claiming her own pleasure. This has always been his biggest turn on.
But he knew her. He knew where this was going. They ll resume where they left off. She ll fall into a comfortable safe place, where she gets rewards without risk and little guilt. They had done that. He wanted that too. But he wanted all of her more than that. It could give in.
MarkD: You seem quite categorical. My imagination runs wild too, but seems more creative. Do you only ever think about it the same way you did before, or do you ever consider how it might be... tomorrow?
The silence was a vacuum, sucking all the stale air out of the room. He saw his own reflection, gaunt and pale, in the dark monitor. He saw the stacks of unfinished notes, the broken printer, the shrine to a life of almost. He saw the flickering bulb above him, its pulse erratic, dying.
Then, a notification. She was typing… He was appearing offline. He didn’t breathe. The hum of the computer fan became a roar in his ears. Every possibility, every consequence, every pathetic shred of hope he’d tried to bury rose up in that awful, silent moment. The chat window waited. JulieMar is typing…
He stared at the glowing screen where her words were slowly, inevitably, being born. The past and the present, colliding in the dark of his quiet, disappointing office.
JulieMar: With the physical distance—you in Canada and me in France—I can't really think of how things might turn out tomorrow. So I'm revisiting earlier passages and ending them differently from reality... But yes, in my imagination, these are indeed situations from today. A lot can happen in one's mind late at night. I'm going to go... think about it some more now...
It will take all his will to resist that game. And god was he weak right now.
MarkD: Your imagination is wonderful… but has it ever tried to find solutions to this “problem”? That’s where mine tends to go sometimes.
JulieMar: Yes, yes... I often find a way to justify a physical relocation. It doesn't have to be possible in reality. It is possible in my mind...
Damned Julie. Closing again into the comfort of virtual sex and non physical cheats. Mark wants none of that anymore. Silence will be his next responses until she s ready to commit.
"Enough kids game" and he shut downs his laptop.
Several days go by. Mark checks his messages. Nothing. Then After 2 weeks.
JulieMar: It's still a bit frustrating... It could be different...
"Now that's progress".