Wednesday morning, and the beach was gone.

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I’d missed a payment, but in some hopeful way I’d thought perhaps I’d get a break.  Wasn’t that what everyone wishes would be them?  A computer error, and suddenly that bill disappears.  Some poor nine-to-fiver feels some pity.  But it wasn’t me.  Accurate as a clock, my account had been terminated, and the beach was gone.

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It wasn’t entirely gone.  I still had little snippets.  A taste of sea air on my tongue.  A glimmer of a full moon lighting everything bright as day.  My coworker, what’s-his-name, sitting with me on the dock as we shared—oh I don’t remember.  Something.  The feeling of an inadvisable kiss: an old fling of mine that barely even got in touch these days but who I still dreamt of what we could have been.  My family, a distant light on the shore around a barbecue I could rejoin at any time I wanted to.  Even though the rest of the memory was mostly gone, I could still remember the smell of the grill at a distance over the smell of the ocean, meaty and saucy and enticing even now that I was awake.

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At first I thought I could handle it.  I went about my day as if nothing had changed.  It was just a memory, right?  Why worry about a fake never-happened when I’ve got the day that’s actually happening now to experience.  But it didn’t work, did it?  I mean, I’m here now, aren’t I?

Around me, I see sympathetic face nodding in their own personal nightmares.  They’ve all been here.  They’re all still here, right now, along with me.  They understood in a way that all the people who were up-to-date on their subscription never did.

“Yeah, I couldn’t hack it either.”  That from the suave wolf.  Said his name was Clint.  He had a slim cigarette in his muzzle that glowed softly in the otherwise poorly-lit train car.  Absent the normally bulky wolf physique, he looked like more like a coyote, but a monster of a dog that ducked to step through doorways even though his legs fit into comically thin skinny jeans.  He gave me a ghost of a smile and blew out a fragrant cloud.  Normally, smoke made me choke—even the saccharine-sweet clouds the kids with vape pens left drifting everywhere.  Clint’s smoke, though, had an herbal tang that cut through the smell and made it less objectionable.  Cloves.  Not pleasant, but at least a bit less repulsive.

Next to him, Jules sat forward in her wheelchair.  “I don’t know what you’re all acting so mopey about.  At least you had access to it in the first place, even if you’ve lost it now.”  The snow leopardess leaned on her arm rest with a sour glare.  Her eyes were bright and incisive, even if the rest of her body struggled to keep up with her wit.

“Better to have loved and lost, than never have loved at all?”  Just to my left, laying across three seats on my side of the train, Albert uncrossed and re-crossed his legs, with one knee propped up over the other thigh.  Long lapine ears wiggled as he seemed to consider for a moment.  His head turned towards Jules.  The hare’s whiskers twitched expressively, before he finished his quote with a reference.  “Tennyson.”

“Don’t you quote your poets at me, bunny.”  Jules showed fangs.

“You were dipping your toe into philosophy.  That’s my pond, pretty kitty.”  Albert re-adjusted his spectacles on his face, and for a moment it appeared he wasn’t going to rise to the needling.  A few seconds later into the rumbling background noise of our train in motion, his resolve failed.  “And I’m a hare.  Thank you very much.”

Rather than continue the argument, Jules leaned back.  Her wheelchair looked so much more comfortable than the barely-padded plastic seats the rest of us were in.  Her ears had folded back.  Her normally prickly personality seemed to have been mollified by being called pretty.

“I didn’t even make it a day.”  Clint continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted.  He told the story as if it was a shame he needed to expel to find piece.  “I was on registers that morning.  I figured if I didn’t bring it up, no one would notice, right?  First customer that came to my till—the very first one—called me out on it.  You know how humiliating that is?  She talked about her boyfriend while I rang up her basket.  Said ‘You know how he is.  He’s such a David.’  As if she expected me to know who David was.  And then I realized she probably did expect me to know.  This was a Beach thing, right?  What if David was a character that everyone knew, and had a personality that explained everything?  But I couldn’t remember that anymore.  So I nodded and laughed!”

“Oops.”  Said Lisa.  She was leaning against a pole, holding onto it casually through each twist and bend that the train rocketed through.  Her body conformed to the lateral acceleration effortlessly, though occasionally her horns got entangled with the handholds drooping from above and had to be rescued.  Her creepy goat eyes laughed silently at Clint, even though her expression never changed.  She was wearing a punk jacket made of black wool with spikes poking through the shoulders.

“Yeah.  Big oops.  Apparently David wasn’t a good guy.  You know, a real manipulator.  Everyone on the Beach hated him.  And this girl in front of me was planning to break up with her boyfriend, because he was a David.  Well how was I supposed to know?”

“By being on the Beach is how.”  I nodded.  Yeah.  We’d all been there.  The beach wasn’t just a memory.  It was an in-group.  It was shared cultural touchstones, without which us poor unsubscribed were hopelessly ill-equipped to participate.  “But you know, I was thinking…”

“Won’t work.”  Albert stated matter-of-factly.

I carried on, blithely ignoring his pessimism.  “So, follow me here.  Okay, so now we know about David.  Who else has had a name?  Or an event?  We could share them, and—“

“They change them.”  Albert sat up from his sprawl.  “Constantly.  Overnight updates send it out to everyone’s personal Beach.  David becomes Margaret becomes Andy becomes Steven.  Today he’s a dog, where yesterday she was a mouse, and the day before who knows what he was?  And no one’s left behind, because every Beach updates simultaneously and tomorrow everyone’s talking about the new guy as if he’d always been there.”

“And we’re stuck on the outside.”  Jules scowled.  The rest of us nodded along with her.  “You know, there’s technically no reason I couldn’t have been on the beach?”

“But you’re…”  Lisa ventured out bravely, before realizing that she was unwilling to finish that thought into the silence that carried on for a few uncomfortable moments.

“Disabled.  Yeah.  You can say it.  Are you expecting me to jump in surprise?  ‘Am I?  Oh gosh, that explains so much!’  But it doesn’t matter.  My head’s fine even if my legs aren’t.  But it didn’t matter.  Too much of a risk, the doctors said.  Cowards.  Not a one of them would help me out.  All I’d get is that pitying, patronizing look, like they understand.  Like they get it.  Don’t get me started about people who say they understand.”  She looked off to the side so she didn’t have to look at us.  Outside the window, another nameless borough flashed past.  “I bet they all told themselves just how compassionate they were being as they chatted about their own personal Beaches to their nurses and techs later on in the day—“

“Come on, Jules.  That’s not fair.”  Albert glared at her condescendingly.

She unlocked the brakes of her wheelchair while she glared back.  “Tell me all about fair again?”

He didn’t respond.  All of us let the silence sit as the train came to a stop.  Lisa’s mobile buzzed, but with a flick she silenced it.

“Anyway, this is my stop.”  Jules spun herself towards the nearby door.

The other four of us all rushed to respond.

“Wait, but I thought—“

“Jules, aren’t you coming with—“

“It’s not for another ten stops!”

“We were all going to—“

Jules let out a yowl that cut through our outpouring of support and disappointment and pointed up at the railway map, clearly displaying the next stops.  “See something missing?”

I didn’t.  Clearly, none of the rest of us did, either.  Jules propped herself up on her handrests so she could reach up and tap at the map.  Under her finger was what we all thought was our destination: Pebble Beach.  Ten stops (or about an hour and a half) away.

“Yeah?”  I ventured with a questioning lift to the end of my statement.

Jules’ claw left a score in the plastic as she rolled herself through the door onto the platform outside our train car.  “No disabled access.”

She was right.  Clearly marked every few stops was a little figure of a wheelchair, indicating elevator access to street-side from the train platform.  Unnoticed to the rest of us, that particular figure was absent from our destination.

“Good luck, losers.  Hope you enjoy your new memory.”  She said sourly as the door chime rang twice.  Her breath misted in the cold winter air and puffed around her head.  And then before the door closed, her expression softened.  “Sorry.  I should have said something.  I don’t mean to be a bitch.  No, seriously, I hope you all have a good night.  See you all next week?”

Then the door closed.  She watched us as the train pulled away from the platform, and her home district disappeared into the distance.

It was nearly five minutes of relative silence.  Not counting the occasional squealing of wheels on the train as we went around a bend.  Or the soft ‘whapping’ of the hand-holds hitting the luggage rail, or occasionally Lisa’s horns with only one unfortunately tangling.  Albert was the first to speak up.  “If this works, we need to figure out how to bring her next time.”

That was met with universal agreement.  Unspoken was a glow of the suggestion that this might not be something that happened just once.  While we marinated in the anticipation, Albert’s phone buzzed.  He picked it up, glanced at the screen, then swiped it and the buzzing ceased.

“At least her doctors had an excuse.”  Lisa muttered into the rattle of another bend in the rail.  She was busy looking at her own phone.  She tapped it once, put it up to her ear, but in a second we could all hear the sound of voice mail before she hung up.

“Wait, yours didn’t?”  I asked.

The goat lifted her hand and pointed a thick-nailed finger.  “Barely hidden prejudice.  That’s what my doctor had.  That was how we all slip between the cracks, right?  Miss a payment?”

I nodded as her finger jabbed at me.

“Not an able-bodied worker?”  Her thumb lifted and pointed back along the train where Jules had so recently departed.  Then she pointed at herself as her body tilted to counter a curve.  “Part of a minority?”

“Oh?”  Albert asked.  He was a smart hare, but not the most observant.

“Yeah.  With the same hand that they give you your hormone prescription, they turn off your little buddy.  ‘To help you emotionally regulate.’  Some medical lies about drug interactions.  As if the hormones aren’t naturally produced by half of the people who have The Beach  Idiots.  They know it wrecks us to have our connection to culture removed like that.  It’s intentional and cruel.”

Albert seemed to connect the wires and nodded.  Clint didn’t.  “I don’t get it.  What’s Lisa that—“

“She’s trans.”  I kicked his shin.

The big wolf held his shin as if I’d genuinely hurt him, but looked contrite that he hadn’t noticed.

“Nah.”  Lisa smiled at him.  “It’s a compliment.  I’m actually sort of proud that you couldn’t tell.”  Her smile showed a thick row of square, blocky herbivore teeth.

Clint gave her another smile as he leaned back and took another tug from his cigarette.  While he exhaled again, Albert’s phone buzzed again.  This time, without even checking it, he swiped it silent.

“Drama?”  I asked him.

His little nose wiggled before he met my gaze.  “Evening shift called out.  So the manager is making it everyone else’s problem.”

Clint laughed.  “Yeah, had bosses like that.  Good thing you got plans.”

“Yeah.”  But Albert looked unsure.  His phone buzzed again, and this time he couldn’t keep his eyes off of the screen when he hit the ‘Refuse Call’ button again.

Two more stops passed.  Lisa told us about her girlfriend.  I talked about my nephew, who was visiting next weekend.  But maybe that wasn’t happening anymore.  My sister saw that she had been uninvited from my Beach, and she was taking it personally.  I didn’t want to tell her that I couldn’t pay.  That was a humiliation I wasn’t willing to undergo, even if it meant I didn’t see my nephew.

Albert was silent, except for another two missed calls.  And on the third, he finally answered.

“Joe, I’m on a train.  I can’t talk right—“

The hare jerked his head back as if he’d been struck.  I could hear yelling through the tinny phone speaker.

“That’s not my fault.  I’d appreciate it if you would—“

More shouting.  The hare’s ears slowly wilted.

“I’ve got plans.  I can’t just—“

At that point his ears fell until they were drooping over his shoulders.  I knew what was coming next.

“Yes.  I understand.  It will take me a bit to—“

I didn’t blame him.  If he could do without the Beach, he couldn’t do without a flat.  Or food.  We all had needs.

“Joe, I literally can’t get there any faster than an hour from now.  I’m getting off at the next stop, and it’ll—“

The shouting didn’t cease until this ‘Joe’ on the other side of the phone hung up.

“Asshole.”  Lisa commented.  Albert didn’t disagree.  Seven stops out and he departed the train, too, with a promise that he’d join us again next week.  And then there were three.

“And here I thought it’d be a good chance to get the whole crew out there.  Well, more the fool, me, I guess.”  I grumped.  An arm wrapped around behind my back as Clint stood and slipped over to my side of the train, taking the seat Albert had just abandoned.  He tried to hug me, then found his hand tangled in my wing flaps.

“Sorry.”  I lifted my arms, and my flaps showed themselves, running from wrist to ankle down my sides.  I leaned so my bushy tail could exit to the other side of the seat so it wasn’t tickling Clint’s face.  “I make hugs complicated.”

“Yeah.  Hell.  Why didn’t you just say you’d meet us there.  You could have flown and saved yourself the train fare.”

I squeaked a laugh.  Clint smiled at me and turned his head so his clove-scented nicotine cloud wasn’t aimed at me.

“Dude, can’t you just wait for the end of the trip to smoke that?  You’re gonna get us thrown off.”  Lisa pointed at the ‘No Smoking’ sign clearly demarking Clint’s cigarette as clearly against the rules.  Her phone buzzed, grabbing her attention.  She read something on it anxiously, chewing a lip.

Clint scowled and stubbed his butt out on the plastic portion of the seat, leaving a mild scar in its surface.  Then he leaned back and fit the half-burned end behind one of his triangular ears.

“So why’re you here?  I assume you’re like me and Albert?”

“Yeah.”  I shrugged.  “Rough month.  Rent went up.  Then there was the heating.”

“Shouldn’t your landlord be sorting that out?”

“Should.”  I confirmed.  “And when they don’t?  What am I going to do, sue him?”

“Yeah.”  Clint nodded.

Lisa leaned in from her position on the pole.  “That takes money.  Idiot.  Let me guess, you reported him, and now it’s been weeks waiting for someone to do something?”

“Bingo.”  I scowled.  “Looked at everything I’m paying.  What could I do without for a month?  I couldn’t survive without heating.  Literally.”

“And how’s that going for you?”  Clint scowled.

I shrugged.  “You got it right.  I thought no one would notice.  But they did.  And quick.  Pretty badly, too.”

I remembered being called into my boss’ office.  It wasn’t a fun conversation.  How it’s important that our customers know we can relate to them.  Being relatable and sociable is in the job description.  Plus, it’s a bad look if our customers think we’re not paying our staff enough to afford the necessaries, like The Beach.  That’s not a problem is it?  We are paying you above market rate for a phone salesman.  Woman.  Saleswoman.  Aren’t we?  Look, we’re an understanding employer.  Take the afternoon off.  Unpaid, of course.  Sort this all out.  Get your account fixed.  And when you’re on shift tomorrow, we’ll forget all this, okay?

I said okay, and left my boss’ office, wondering how I was supposed to sort this out.  I’d called out sick the next day.  The next day I’d found an advertisement online for a local support group for people without The Beach.

“I bet.  Well, who needs ‘em?”  Clint lifted his fingers to his muzzle before realizing it didn’t contain a cigarette.  “We’ll make our own memories.  Who needs their Beach?  We got a real one, just six stops away!”

“Five.”  Lisa corrected.

“Five stops away!”

Clint rambled down into silence for the duration of another glare at his tragically empty fingers.  “Who needs ‘em?”

“I do.”  Lisa stated flatly.  “The moment I can get back in…”

“Well, not me.”  Clint scowled.  “It’s a scam.  It’s fake.  They’re feeding us fake happiness to remember yesterday so they can make our today suck.”

He wasn’t wrong.  But what choice did we have?  Us three weren’t going to “make everyone wake up” and subvert the system.  Hell, it’d been tried before by bigger people than us.  What chance did we have?  “Yeah, but your job.”

“I’ll get another.”  Clint averted his eyes.  Bold claim.  Pointless.  We all knew how that would go.  There were too many people and not enough things for them to do.  If he’d already shown he couldn’t hold down one job, what chance did he have somewhere else?  He saw our doubt.  Growled.  “I will.”

“Yeah.”  Lisa was distracted.  Staring at her phone.  I had a bad feeling about it.

Clint must have had the same bad feeling.  “Not you too.”

“Take a look!  Take a look!”  She bleated, then turned her phone to us.  On its screen was a conversation box.  There was a message from some guy named ‘Mac’.

“Yeah, got stock in.  Not much.  Can get you turned back on, but gotta be here asap.  Like, yesterday.  Not the only girl waiting for one of these.  Lemme know if you’re gonna be here today.  I’ll sell to the next on the list by tonight otherwise.”

“I got it!  It’s here!”  She bounced against the pole, then took her phone back.

“What’s ‘it’?”  I asked.

“Who’s Mac?”  Clint growled.

“My dealer.  Look, a girl’s got to have something to take the edge off.  So, I asked him if he could get something to turn my little buddy back on!”  She lifted her long hair and showed us the little module beneath her left ear.  Little buddy.  The global wi-fi link.  Your gateway to everything.

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Lisa’s was inactive.  Normally there was a little status light, but hers was dark.  She let her hair fall back and tapped a quick response on her phone.  “Sorry, I gotta.  You understand, right?  Sorry.”  She apologized again as she almost floated towards the train door.  Brakes brought our chariot to a stop, and she exited.  She looked back over her shoulder.  I waved.  Clint scowled.  She looked guilty, but as the train pulled away again, I saw her steps happy and excited as she ran to another connecting train.

And then there were two.

“Not the crowd you expected, huh?”  Clint scowled.

“Nope.”  I admitted.  I stood and stretched.  It had been nearly an hour.  We were only four stops out, and at the end of the line they’d come pretty quickly.  “Look, we don’t have to.”

“Yeah, but I want to.”  The wolf looked at me.  I wondered what he was thinking.  There was some ancient little fear that my conscious brain quickly squashed.  A prey animal like me always gets a tingle like that when looking at a predator like Clint.  In the ancient long-past wild, a wolf like him would have happily caught and eaten a squirrel like me.  Hah.  As if he’d have the chance.  Apparently my ancient predecessors had been pretty nimble.  Us squirrels only rarely came down to the ground level, and with these fancy wing flaps that were now entirely vestigial to me, we used to be able to glide from tree to tree without ever having to get down to wolf-level.  I caught his gaze.  Was that a smidgen of hunger I saw in his eyes?  Heh, maybe.

“Really?  Just the two of us?  Not much of a Beach.  Even sad basement-lurkers will have more than just one other person on their Beach.”  I taunted him, as if I didn’t realize he was flirting with me.

“Yeah.  Really.  It’s not about how many, right?  It’s about who.”

“Flatterer.  You know basically nothing about me.”  I chided.

“Fine.  Then tell me, what would it take for a wolf like me to get onto the beach of a squirrel…”  I saw his glance pause for a moment.  Hah, if he’d had trouble with Lisa, he had no chance with me.  He tilted his head to the side in confusion and took a stab in the dark.  “Squirrel girl?”

“Guess again.”  I leaned against the pole Lisa had been using.  It was still warm from her grip in my hands.

“Squirrel guy?”  His tone was still questioning, though he though he’d found the obvious alternative.

“Strike two.”

He didn’t seem to know what to make of that, but he also still seemed game.  I didn’t mind.  He seemed a bit dense.  I’d already pegged him as a bit naive.  At least he wasn’t opposed to the surprise third option.

It was dusk when we finally exited the train at Pebble Beach.  Up at street level, high rises crowded in on every side.  Neon signs advertised every style of food we could desire, as if we had money to eat out.  A sign proudly declared that Pebble Beach was nearby, but a helpful person had spraypainted cyrillic letters over the bottom half of the sign, including presumably an arrow pointing the direction.

Clint knew the way.  Not that he’d ever been here, but he told me to trust his nose.  So I did.  Left down a dead-end alleyway, before we decided to stick to the main roads.  He reached out to take my hand, and I let him.  We found a stoplight and thick, clogging traffic that was too noisy for us to talk.  Clint led me left at the next intersection, and in five minutes of walking, we found Pebble beach.

Some part of me wishes we hadn’t.  It was technically a beach, clearly.  There was water down there.  I could see it lapping against the foundations of the roads running squat traces around the high-rise hotels that all advertised pristine ocean views.  To the left was a dock, where hulking monstrosities of ships disgorged rectangular crates.  To the right was a jetty with expensive yachts moored.  In neither direction was there any sand.  Or even pebbles.

I could see the disappointment in Clint’s eyes.  Even though the sun hadn’t officially set yet, it was behind the tall buildings we’d passed.  Looking for any semblance of a chance at salvaging our day, I led him down to the jetty.  A cordon made it clear we weren’t welcome.  There was a reception further down the wharf where visitors could book a trip by one of the commercial yachts for a luxurious party out on the waves.  The multi-million dollar boats sat unused and uninhabited, each one more lavish than the next.  Here was gold.  There was a “lord” or “sir” in the title painted on the side of the vessel.  There was a declaration that this vessel was protected by Secu-Yacht, the premier provider of automated security.  This was a place for people with money.

Lucky for us, none of them were here right now, so I hopped over the rope and tugged at Clint until he followed me.  Unchallenged and unobserved, we walked down the jetty, between the monuments to excess that bumped against their respective docks.  We walked to the end, where, for the first time, we both had a view.  It was only here, at the very end of the jetty, where we could look out to sea without having the cruel call of consumerism crowding in at the edges.

We sat there as the sky turned orange, then red, and then the stars came out.  The ocean smelled bad, or maybe it was the yachts.  There was the scent of plastic and oil, just above the scent of decaying fish.

“You’re right.”  Clint admitted.  “There should have been more of us here.”

I shot him a glance, and he gulped guiltily.  “Not that I’m not enjoying your company!  No!  It’s that—“

“Oh, shush.  I wasn’t insulted.  I get it.  Your right.”  As memories go, this was a pretty poor one.  I just knew that if I looked back on this moment, years from now, all I’d remember is how disappointing it all actually was.  What’s the point of The Beach if it’s just…  Water?  Water and rich people’s crap and dead fish.  Would I remember Clint?  He was a nice guy.  Clueless, but nice.  I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.  Did I see myself with Clint?  Probably not.  He was cute, but not really my type.  

He turned his head to me, and I knew what he wanted.  He wasn’t really my type.  But he was cute.  So what the hell?  I turned my head and kissed him.  He tasted of cigarette.  Maybe his cloves weren’t as horrible in the air, but it was disgusting on the lips.  I didn’t pull away, but I think he realized it and ended the kiss.

We were silent for a while.  Behind us, the city was so bright that we couldn’t see any but the brightest stars.  High, smoggy clouds intermittently covered them, along with the slim sliver of moon we had.

Beside me, I heard a sniffing.  Clint was crying.  “Sorry I messed even this up.”

“You didn’t.”  I said.  I don’t know if he believed me, but he stopped crying pretty quickly after.  “This is all there ever was to find.  You were right.  We were being sold a lie.  And we all know it.”

“Yeah.”  He lapsed into silence, then pulled out his phone.

A few seconds later, my phone buzzed, too.  I pulled it out and glanced at it.  One message from Culture Incorporated.

We miss you!  We noticed that you hadn’t been back to your Beach in a few days.  As a gesture of good will, we at Culture would like to offer you this one-time coupon to reactivate your account for half of your normal monthly rate!  Please consider coming back.  Your friends miss you.

Beside me, Clint was biting his fist.  His knees pulled up to his chest.  He glanced at me, and I nodded.  It must have been the same message.

“It’s a lie.”  He said.

“Just a fake memory to make you happy about a fake yesterday.”  I nodded and turned my mobile’s display off.

“Yeah, so you won’t notice that today sucks.”

“And tomorrow will be worse.”  At least on that, the two of us were in agreement.

“Yeah.  No.”  The wolf put his phone back in his pocket.  He seemed to have rallied.  But he didn’t take my hand again.

I did as he did and gazed out across the waves.  I could only see the faint glimmer of incoming swells from the reflected moon and star light.  Neither of us spoke.

“You know, I think they’re actually evil.”  He whispered.

I nodded.  “Just realizing that?”

“I knew it.  I did!  But, I don’t think I believed it.  Who planned that?  It’s like they were watching us, and…”

“And you think they’d bother having a real flesh and blood person watching people whose accounts lapse?  Hah!”  His ears flinched when I laughed, so I didn’t repeat the shrill cackle.  “It’s all automated.  Someone in their data department ran the numbers and determined the optimal number of days to wait before sending us those coupons.  It’s automated.  It’s mindless.  Headless.  It’s an algorithmic evil.  It’s optimized design meant to exploit us at our statistically weakest time.”

He didn’t look like a wolf used to thinking deep thoughts.  They troubled him.  He didn’t look happy with it.

“But what difference does it make if we’re miserable?”  He mused, as if he hadn’t already made a decision.

“You mean more miserable than we’re going to be anyway?”  I asked.

“Yeah, that.”  He stayed staring out over the sea.

I wasn’t going to give him a hard time.  I could, but would that make him happier?  Or me?  Where was all that bluster?  Where was all that anger?  Where was all of the vitriol at the obviously evil corporation that had—and was even currently—exploiting him and everyone he knew?

But would him suffering make anyone happier?  Would it make me happier?  So I let it go, and pretended not to notice when his phone came back out of his pocket again.  There was a soft sampled recording of coins clinking.  A transaction had just occurred.

“I’m sorry.”  He whispered.  I understood.  I didn’t hold out much longer.  Without another word, he stood and walked away.  It wasn’t personal, not really.  I think he just couldn’t face me right now.

I watched Clint walk down the jetty back towards town.  I felt sorry for him.  Poor puppy had seen the real wilds.  The terrors of an unaugmented mind.  The sad reality of real memories that you make yourself.  He’d looked the horror of an authentically experienced life directly in the eyes, and blinked.

He wasn’t alone.  I looked down at my phone, where my console welcomed me back to The Beach with the resubscription to Culture Premium.  All of my contacts had been re-added to my Beach, and along with the next update while I slept, would be restored to my memory.

Clint was nearing the rope cordon when I reached a decision.  He lifted his phone to see the invitation I’d sent.  He stopped.  It took him a few more moments to have the nerve to look back.  Even in the dim lights of the safety lights of the jetty, I could see his features.  His ears lifted.  His tail gave an involuntary wag.  He didn’t come back.  He was still fragile.  I understood.  But still, he tapped his phone before he turned away again and disappeared into the night.  My phone buzzed.

Clint has joined your Beach!