Julia

Isabella rose with the rising sun, just as she always had.

She made her bed and then started making some coffee. She flipped the radio on, not really listening but grateful for the noise which ended the silence in the room. She made toast, slathered on some butter, and then poured herself some coffee and headed down to her store. She could see the busy street through the storefront windows. It was foggy. She adored the fog. At least, she adored how it looked when she was standing at her counter, looking out.

It was almost perfect.

She noticed the city bus trundle by, just like it always did. It wasn’t the right kind of bus. That irked Isabella. How difficult was it to get the bus right? She had complained about it again and again, but they always told her that there was nothing wrong with the bus. They even showed her pictures of the bus. It was the right model, it had the right paintjob, even the advertisements were period correct. Or so they claimed. What did they know? She had watched that bus pass by her store every day for seven years. It was wrong. She was sure of it.

The door opened, breaking the illusion. Another thing that irked Isabella. How hard was it to simulate a customer walking down the street? It couldn’t have been that difficult. Instead, the door opened automatically, tearing a hole in her little reality and exposing the black void in which she lived. A flash of light, and then the door was closed again. A man was suddenly standing in her store.

“Good morning, sir,” Isabella greeted him. “How may I help you?”

“You’re… you’re Isabella De Soto, right?” he inquired nervously. Something about his demeanor unnerved Isabella. He was well dressed, but that didn’t mean anything. Not anymore. He seemed… desperate. A little wild. Isabella remembered people like him. Usually drug addicts. But Isabella was tough. She had grown up in the city. She was never nervous around those kind of people. At least, she didn’t used to be.

“Yes,” Isabella replied, hiding her misgivings behind her trademarked friendly smile. “I’m Isabella De Soto, and this is Isabella’s Jewelry and Engravings.”

The man shuffled uncomfortably. “You… you wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to find you…” he explained lamely. “It’s… God, I don’t even know. It feels like eons. This… I mean… this is San Francisco, right?”

“I mean, it was,” Isabella confirmed.

The man glanced around the store. “I’m… I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I… not all of me… I don’t recognize this. I thought… I thought I would remember…”

Isabella suddenly understood. “Do you remember your name?” Isabella asked.

“No,” the man replied sadly. “I don’t… I don’t even know if I look like this.” He gestured to himself, a white man in his late-twenties.

“This is all I have,” he explained, placing a golden heart-shaped locket on Isabella’s counter. “It has your store’s name on it.”

Isabella picked it up. It was her handiwork. A small, golden locket shaped like a rounded heart. It didn’t have a chain. It was engraved with intricate flower motifs surrounding a name: “Julia”.

“I take it this was your one memento,” Isabella guessed.

“Yeah,” the man replied glumly. “They screwed everything else up. I lost… I lost everything. Everything.”

The man stamped his foot hard in impotent rage. “I… I know I was a man,” he continued softly. "From San Francisco. And at some point, I came into this store, and I asked you to make me that. That’s it. That’s all I know.”

Isabella clicked the locket open. “To the only girl who loves me as much as I love her,” it read. There was a place for a picture, but the picture was gone.

“They said it wasn’t healthy,” the man explained. His voice unnerved Isabella. It was full of bitter, tired anger.

“It’s all I have,” he continued. “I had to learn how to speak, walk, eat. And they kept saying I was lucky. I was alive. I am alive. I don’t know who I am, or what I did, what I loved, who I loved. But I am alive.”

Isabella sighed. “You’re not the first one to ask me this sort of thing, you know?” she explained.

“Please…” he replied curtly. “They told me all this before. They told me to stop obsessing over the past. They told me… they told me Earth is gone. I know. I know she’s dead, whoever… “

He paused to turn around and glance out the storefront window. Fog swirled around the buildings. People in their long coats were on their way to work. Bikes and cars struggled up the street.

“No one ever told you to stop living in the past, I bet,” he said suddenly. “It’s all we have. This… this body. These clothes, this store. It’s all a simulation. I know that. But… but what is it but a memory? Move on, they said. The past won’t make me feel better. Make new memories. And yet they talk to me out their mouths, wearing their sweaters, in their offices overlooking Los Angeles and Shanghai and London. Just like you, talking out of your mouth. In your store. In your San Francisco, on your planet Earth. Like nothing ever happened.”

“I’ve never made anyone feel better by bringing up the past,” Isabella said.

“You know I won’t leave,” the man replied. “The others didn’t either, I bet. So why are you trying to talk me out of it?”

“Who do you think “Julia” was?” Isabella asked.

The man was silent for a long while.

“I… I thought about that a lot,” he began. “At first I thought she was my mother. But it says, “the only girl who loves me”. I wouldn’t call my mother a “girl,” would I? A lover. Maybe a daughter…”

Isabella sighed again.

“She’s all I have left…” he finished.

“You really want to know?” Isabella asked.

The man looked sick. “What… what’s the big idea?” he demanded. “Why… why are you being so ominous about this? What’s… I mean…”

He shook his head, and then looked directly into Isabella’s eyes.

“Yes,” he said.

“She was a dog,” Isabella replied.

The man didn’t react. He just stood there, as still as a rock.

“That’s what I did, that’s what I do,” she explained. “I make these things for dogs. It goes on a collar. That’s why there’s no chain.”

The man still didn’t react.

“I’m sorry,” Isabella said.

“Why?” the man asked suddenly.

“I… I just…”

“I look like an idiot, don’t I?” the man sighed.

“No… you…”

“One thing,” the man interrupted. “I could bring one thing. That’s what they said. They screwed everything else up, except that. That.”

The man shook his head, and then turned to leave.

“Wait,” Isabella called out.

“What?”

“Do… do want to see a picture?” she asked. “Of Julia?”

The man regarded Isabella warily.

“Is that a joke?” he demanded.

“No,” Isabella replied. “I told you. I keep meticulous records. Your name is Charlie. Charlie Erikson. And I have the picture you gave me. At least… a copy of it.”

The man sheepishly returned to the counter.

“It’s kinda pathetic, isn’t?” he asked as Isabella pulled the photo out of her memory bank.

“She’s a very cute dog,” Isabella replied. There was Julia. A very happy golden retriever.

“The only girl who loves me as much as I love her,” the man commented glumly. “I can’t believe it. Of all the things I could have brought, I brought that silly locket.”

“I miss fog,” Isabella said suddenly.

The man looked up from the photo. “There’s fog outside,” he said.

“No, there isn’t,” Isabella explained. “It’s… fake. It doesn’t look right. That’s what I asked for. When they said I could bring one thing, I asked for fog. They said there would be fog. They got the store right. They got me right. But the fog… they screwed that up.”

“I think we all knew they were going to screw it up,” the man replied. “After all, I brought the locket. I didn’t bring Julia. I… I couldn’t bring Julia. Not really.”

Isabella handed Charlie the photo and the locket. “I could put the photo back into the locket, if you’d like,” she offered.

“No, but thanks,” he replied with a sigh, “I think I know now why the photo was missing in the first place. I was probably embarrassed. Heck, I’m still embarrassed.”

The man turned to leave. “Thanks for not judging me,” he said sheepishly.

“Love is a funny thing,” Isabella replied. “If we can still feel it, then maybe this isn’t so bad.”

The man looked at the photo in his hand. And then he smiled.

“If you say so,” he said. And then he vanished into the void.

Isabella found herself gazing at one of the display cases which lined one of the walls of her store. It was full of wedding rings. She used to engrave them for newly-weds. “Eternal love.” “Till death do us part.” “Forever, and ever, and ever.”

Or, for the particularly prophetic: “Until the Earth ceases.”

And yet, no one had ever come into her store to ask about a ring. It was always the lockets. The dog lockets.

Isabella didn’t understand. She had never had a dog before.

The fake bus passed by again. The fake fog swirled around it.

It would drive her mad one of these days. She was sure of it.