C. Elegans
By Juliet Clare Kelway
What I remember most clearly from that night are the curtains in the hospital room. That strange white speckled with blue and pink indiscriminate designs; like some sort of Rorschach test. The more you stare at the pattern, the more the images dance and meld together, creating entirely new shapes. My brain tried to create some context, tried to weed through the information and form a narrative.
“Do you know where you are?”
A voice came at me from the right — probably some ad for cheap vacation tickets. Masked as people, advertisements had gotten so intrusive. I had no desire to sit on a beach chair taking selfies. I changed my status to “offline.”
A strange smell was stuck to me, reminiscent of burnt toast. It was so strong I could taste it; thick on my tongue, clogging my throat. The sterile smell of rubbing alcohol tried to cut its way through.
“We only have access to your username. What’s the name on your birth certificate?”
A voice from the left. Deeper. A man’s. He clearly isn’t respecting my offline notification. Men like that give me the creeps. I regularly block or report them. Usually, they try to get in with a simple “Hey.” Other times, they’re a bit more straightforward, interjecting with their dick wagging out of their pants. Or, as of late, menacing suggestions of one of several inhumane things they’d like to do before screwing me. Asking for my name is a bold move, though…
I reached up to remove my VR headset, only to realize it’s not there.
I have three different usernames, and a fourth left over from high school. I use them to log into everything. To purchase items, listen to music, play online, interact with people. Sometimes, it takes a moment to remember my real name.
They say if someone really wants to find out something about you, it’s available on the internet. They just have to hunt for it. That’s why we were warned not to give away personal information online before we were taught anything else.
Before multiplication tables, before The Odyssey, before biology and US History.
That’s Lesson #1.
The “stranger danger” of my generation.
“She’s in shock. Get her information later.”
I don’t like whoever these intruders are.
“Hold her still.”
A strange fear was slipping through me; something was off. My heart started pounding in my chest, desperately trying to push its way out of its cavity, break through my ribs, tear the skin, rip me open like a doll. At this point, I wasn’t even certain whether organs would come out, or stuffing. Finally, a nurse walked into my peripheral vision and seamlessly injected a sedative into my arm.
I slid. I kept sliding deeper and deeper into black, as if someone had switched off the game.
Have you ever heard of C. elegans?
I hadn’t either until recently.
They’re a fairly simple type of worm used extensively in scientific studies of neurobiology. Whereas humans have around 100 billion neurons, C. elegans have 302. When faced with food scarcity, as a method of self-preservation, their bodies shut down and they enter an immobile, depression-like state.
We humans are in a state of scarcity.
Dire official warnings, some from the NIH, some from the CDC, were issued, only to be relegated by algorithms to the bottom of news sites, just above “15 ways to refinance your home”, or “which celebrities are secretly broke.”
The cause of this scarcity, they warn, is a lack of touch. The things that drove us to connect, to reproduce, to bond, no longer give us the thrills they once did.
The tech companies understood this.
They figured out what piques our reward centers. They pushed us to want more, designed games and scenarios in which what we’ve been wired to need over the course of 30 million years of evolution was no longer enough.
Holed up in our living quarters, interacting with others only online, in chat rooms, through our avatars — the Beauty filter smoothing out our imperfections — we isolated ourselves further and further.
Don’t get me wrong… it’s exciting.
Online, you can be a better version of yourself. You can say the things you could never say in public. You have others around you who feel similarly, speak similarly. You live in a lawless world where your id can run rampant.
It’s intoxicating.
I’ve been sober for almost a year now and the world still feels a little muted. But finally being back made me realize what I was missing most.
I’m just a human looking for another human to hold me; to touch me.
That.
Fuck, that’s what I miss most of all. I miss human touch. I crave it. I dream about it. I close my eyes, the black sucking me in, and I project pleasant images. The memories from my past have been viewed so many times, they’re barely usable; like track marks on a junkie.
The image of my finger running its way along the back of her arm, goosebumps growing and raising around my fingertip; her arm hair sticking up on end; a smile tugging at the left side of her lips; my lips mimicking hers; our faces in sync; a hand, palm down, placed gently below my shoulder blade.
The weight of it. The type of pressure that can only be applied by another human attuned to your desires.
There’s something exciting about feeling someone else’s skin against a part of your body that’s impossible to reach, and thus, rarely touched.
All of that.
I wake up aching for it.
In the end; in my most basic form, I’m just a person looking for her person.
And as anyone after Gen-X can attest — it’s really fucking hard.
After a surprisingly short trial, and a stint in a hospital, I was given a court-ordered mandate requiring me to attend VRA meetings.
I enjoyed going to my meetings. They were one of the few times I didn’t have to make a concerted effort to interact with people. Weekly, I would walk through the heavy wooden doors opening out into a large room. The mismatched chairs were set up in a circular fashion, meant to show we’re all equals; as if they honestly believed we weren’t secretly judging one another, using other’s indiscretions as a point of reference to see where we fall on the spectrum of abusive to mildly addicted.
I preferred the chair closest to the window. It was one of the few with seat padding that hadn’t yet burst through. If I ever arrived late and my spot was taken, an irrational, child-like anger ran up my body like heartburn. I forced myself to quickly quell the fire. In reality, not everything is how I design it. I had to accept that.
On this particular evening, a pale-faced woman with large eyes and short wavy hair that curled around the base of her neck, was sitting in my seat. Her eyes scanned every person in the room, as if creating a narrative around our pasts, furrowing out our stories.
I retreated to a tall backed chair and grumpily sat in resentful silence; my gaze burning holes in the woman’s espadrilles.
“I would like to begin the meeting with our serenity prayer”, the VRA leader started. Other voices quickly joined in, like a sleepy congregation responding to a chaplain’s sermon.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and…”
Through one quarter closed eye, I watched the pale-faced woman as we chanted in unison. Both her eyes were open, and her lips were imperceptibly moving. She looked around at the other members, with her head slightly bowed. Her eyes narrowed as she dwelled on certain characters, her story about us growing more vivid.
Finally, her eyes met mine. Realizing her misstep, she closed both eyes and mouthed the words with more enthusiasm.
“Thank you”, the VRA leader said. The group exhaled as we settled into our chairs, shifting our feet to try and break the discomfort.
Most are ashamed in some form or another, not necessarily because of how they behaved in Virtual Reality, but because their behaviors were noticed. They had made a misstep in the world, or hadn’t hidden their compulsion well enough. Some described the scenarios they had created — the affairs they’d had, how many days they went without leaving their apartment, the Incel meetings, how they learned to load and fire an AR-15 with exquisite accuracy by playing Call of Duty for a summer.
Weird shit like that.
“Would anyone like to share any experiences from this past week? Interactions with other humans?” The VRA leader looked around the room, making purposeful eye contact with everyone, a move that usually caused additional shifting of feet and hands. On this evening, User779 —
“Wonderful, thank you, Steve.”
— Steve — decided to contribute. Steve’s clothes comprise of a basic color palette, off-white sneakers, the sole of one foot torn back from the front. His defining feature is the unmistakable smell of stove grease. I’ve sat next to him several times. The smell always reminded me of a diner close to the 11 a.m. turnover from breakfast to lunch — the grill burning off the last of the eggs and oil.
Steve took a long, deep breath, inflating the top half of his body, preparing himself, and exhaled with a grunt.
“This week I, uhh, took the bus over to the park, down by the water.” Steve said, directing this at the grout in between the tiles in front of his feet.
“No…?” the VRA leader gently encouraged.
“No music, no earbuds, no headset. Nothing.” Steve nodded each point as if to drive it home.
The people around the room passively listened, more than likely reviewing their week. Had they transgressed? What was the definition of a transgression? If you spent hours with your eyes closed imagining your old world, is that just as bad as putting a headset on and being in it? Will your days reset if you admit the truth? Or will the judge rescind your sentence in favor of some harsher punishment?
“It was quiet. Or… it was loud, I guess. But different ’cause I couldn’t control any of the noises separately.”
“How did that make you feel?”
Steve huffed at the question the VRA leader posed.
It was the question we all hated, because we all knew it was the only question the VRA leader was allowed to ask.
“Angry,” Steve shot out. The increased decibels caused the muscles in my ears to tense, protecting my ear drums from the unnecessarily aggressive noise.
Others around him nodded in agreement. The lack of control over one’s environment is one of the biggest initial frustrations when getting clean.
“There just wasn’t…” Steve scrunched his face together trying to squeeze the words out. “Enough happening, you know? Like, the park was pretty. But… so what?”
The pale-faced woman across from me furrowed her brow, the creases between her eyebrows deepening. She tugged at her bottom lip, as if trying to tease out an answer to some question.
She didn’t have any of the telltale signs of an addict: the unmistakable marks around the eyes, a mixture of exhaustion and plastic impressions reminiscent of the little indents people who wear glasses get on the bridge of their nose. Her fingers didn’t inadvertently move, trying to encourage some action in front of her. In fact, she seemed strangely balanced. Her world moved in orbit at regular speed and in regular rotation. To her, the universe was obeying the laws of physics, as it always had done.
Jess volunteered next. She had applied for a job as a waitress in a restaurant chain with kitschy outfits and birthday sombreros. Her interactions with the interviewer were stiff.
Jess felt removed from him in a way she hadn’t when she was immersed in her VR world. She felt as though she had become two different people. The one before and after VR was awkward and shy. She was capable of shame. She came to that realization when she was asked about the significant break in her resume.
“People sit across from me now and look at me as if I was just sitting on my couch all day fucking around with video games. They don’t understand what it’s like.”
A lot of VR addicts feel this. The DSM only recently included “VR addiction” in its list of mental disorders, but the reality of the addiction still seemed like a joke. Many refused to believe that something so ubiquitous, that allowed for the exploration of destinations we might never afford to visit, that fabricated social “connection” without physical presence, that “brought our world closer together” could be harmful.
As the room opened up and settled into the comfort of people telling similar sordid tales, the darker stuff came out.
“The sheets were all messed up. I’m guessing someone had been in there right before me, but I didn’t really care. I fucked her, my hand pushing her face into the mattress. I could feel her mouth move below my palm, I guess to scream or something, but I didn’t move it.”
I looked around the room, there were other similarly disgusted faces. You hear this shit and you want to hit the person.
“In my defense — ” Mike shot back quickly, taking in the looks of those around him. “I hadn’t even touched a woman in years. I didn’t even remember what it felt like; I got caught up.”
People shifted their gaze, not wanting to acknowledge that at some point, after copious amounts of alone time and VR porn, they too had thought about walking across the hall, knocking on the apartment door, and engaging in some aggressive, explicit sexual act accompanied by unrealistic noises so loud, that their downstairs neighbor would think someone is being murdered.
I had heard stories of Mike’s addiction proclivities before. Each time, he added some color to his more horrific acts. Some studies say lack of empathy and lack of touch go hand in hand. That might explain some of the reactions in this room.
Any well-adjusted human would probably have left to throw up in a toilet by now. But we all sat there staring at our shoes.
Across from me, the pale-faced woman’s gaze had settled to the window behind her. The bridge of her nose wrinkled before she turned back to the room. Her eyes were glassy and somber. They met mine, and in that moment I felt sorry for her.
“Jia, you haven’t shared,” the VRA leader prodded me.
Slowly, the rest of the room looked up at me, overcoming their self-indulgent guilt to focus once more on someone else’s shame.
I leaned forward in my chair. If I had moved a centimeter further, I would have toppled onto the ground. The distraction may have provided me an excuse to leave, or at least buy me some time. In the year I have been here, I have shared the bare minimum. A feeling of disgust crawled through me whenever I thought of discussing my experiences with the people here. I knew I deserved to be in VRA, but I didn’t think I necessarily deserved to be thrown in with this lot.
“Yeah, sure.” I said, settling my elbows on my knees, my spine curved in a catlike position. “My parents won’t see me…” I started, but immediately dropped this line of thinking.
I still can’t quite figure out what my parents think of me. That’s the frustrating part about returning to reality. You feel shame and embarrassment. Your actions have consequences once again. I’ve regained a number of feelings I didn’t have to worry about in years, along with the ability to guess the emotions of others.
“They’re still not sure what happened, or when the dividing point was between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ behavior. They’re not sure where I am on this spectrum anymore.”
“How did that make…”
“…you feel?” I finished his sentence with an eye-roll, earning a snicker from several members.
“Sad. Because I don’t think I’m actually capable of doing the thing I was charged with. I can’t prove that it was VR induced. Previous lawsuits against VR companies have been thrown out, so, I’m on my own. My parents think I am that person. You know?”
I directed this question at the VRA leader, hoping he’d drop his, “how does that make you feel?” bullshit and offer some real advice.
“Does anyone have anything they’d like to add to that?”
I sighed and leaned back in my chair. The pale-faced woman looked at me, a sudden awareness touching several muscles so as to contort her face.
“That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? You pacify family by kicking VR. You no longer have online people in your life anymore, which is good. But then you don’t really have anyone.” In an uncharacteristically self-reflective way, Willow described the simple conclusion at the bottom of the equation for all former addicts.
After each meeting, I often stay behind to tidy up. Everyone else bolts for the door, as if they have people to see or a life to get back to, whereas I am actively avoiding my next stop for the evening.
I languidly closed the folding chairs and set them against the wall, the backs of each slipping into the one in front, savoring the remaining moments of silence. The dark oak walls around me were comforting. They closed in like a warm blanket on a cold night, holding me there.
Across from me, tossing away used cups of coffee and crumbs from snacks half-heartedly brought, was the pale-faced woman. Her presence still irked me.
I approached the table, combative.
“First session, or just here for fun?”
The woman dusted off her hands into the nearby garbage bin.
“First session,” she said.
Behind her, several members were heading towards the door. She followed their movement with a pursed lip smile. From halfway down the table, I tossed a used cup into the trash next to her, causing her to jump. She was intruding on my territory and she knew it.
“How long have you been here?” She asked as she picked up another plate.
“11 months,” I said, giving her a sense of my status in the hierarchy of former addicts.
The pale-faced woman moved closer to me, nodding once more. Her lips pursed again, but no smile followed.
“Was it easy to accept?” She ventured further, testing my limits.
“Acceptance is irrelevant. I was given a lenient sentence.”
By now the table was almost entirely cleared; soon, we would have to leave. I tried to hold onto the conversation for longer. Any delay is welcome.
“Hearing people’s stories. What we’ve done…” She started, sweeping her hand across the folding table’s now crumb free plastic covering.
“It resonates,” she concluded this thought, with several nods.
“In a sick way,” I added.
The pale-faced woman looked up at me. Her eyes were hazel; specks of brown rimming the green; they held my dark brown eyes. I felt a lurch inside me.
In that moment, I realized I so rarely look anyone in the face, and if I do, I focus on the cheekbones, bridge of the nose, eyebrows, but never the eyes. There was something torturous about eyes, they creeped into you, they tore at you, broke you down.
Her eyes shifted away; I felt their hold release me. My breathing returned to normal.
“I’m sure when they designed this, they imagined games and stronger relationships.”
“Right,” I added sarcastically. “If we just sit on our couch and swipe furiously enough until our phone screens are blurred with take-out grease, we can weed out all the ‘wrong ones’ and find that ‘right one’; the one that checks every box in our journal.”
Oddly, she seemed to be taking this to heart.
“They move fast and break things. All the while, they leave minds fractured by the wayside. Immobile and alone,” I concluded.
Her eyes returned to mine, glossy once more.
“Sorry.” I acquiesced. “Sometimes I can be a grump.”
She moved again, this time a single, conclusive nod.
“C. elegans,” she said with an uncomfortable smile. “I’m Nell,” she added. The corner of her lips pulled up to show me she was of no danger to me.
“Jia.”
She looked to the table, as if to say ‘that’s it’. She stepped forward, gently grabbed my forearm down near the wrist and gave it a squeeze.
“I’ll see you next week.”
The further my wrist slipped into the palm of her hand the more it burned; a slow burn. Chills ran so far up my body, I could feel them in my temples. My entire being begged her to keep holding on, but within moments, her fingers slid back round again and into her pockets.
All I can remember is a wave, then her left leg disappearing out of sight, followed by the right as she slipped through the great oak door.
Paralyzed, I stood in the empty room.
My arm still burned as I walked down Olympic Place. I pushed up the left sleeve of my jacket, certain that if I looked down at my wrist, I would see the fading imprint of her fingers. In the glow of the streetlights, I could see no marks. I ran my fingers over my arm in a similar fashion, mimicking her touch, desperately hoping to feel that jolt once again; the plummet of heart to stomach, tensing of muscles, the wave of euphoria. But it was gone. Not even the faintest ripple remained.
Upon realizing this feeling would now be nothing more than a memory, added to the collection of fantasies to draw upon, I sunk deep into myself. The drop was so dramatic and jarring, that the only appropriate reaction would be to step off the curb into oncoming traffic.
My foot creeped out over the lip of the concrete, reaching out for the mirrored puddle in front of me.
The blare of a car horn.
I swung my leg back to meet the other safely on the sidewalk. A car zipped by, kicking up rainwater, whipping it around the tire like a broken ferris wheel.
Pay attention.
Here it’s possible to die.
I walked through an empty parking lot to the grocery store. The store was almost entirely lifeless. My steps echoed on the linoleum floors. I turned a corner and in front of me was the most overwhelming sight. Half an aisle dedicated entirely to peanut butter. The selection included everything you could ever want: the mixed butters, the organics, the trashy cheap kind. You had your almonds — smooth and chunky — walnut butters in both low-fat and low-sodium. Sometimes, being in the world was exhausting. At least online, your choice was predicted for you.
Tipping up on my toes, I reached out and grabbed the full fat, generic smooth. I find it hard to justify spending $15 on a jar of fancy peanut butter. He tends to like the idea of peanut butter more than the physical sensation of eating it, anyway.
Peanut butter stashed securely in my jacket pocket, I walked past a fenced-in portion of land. The sign stapled up against thin wooden boards boasted a new condominium of affordable housing units. The hospital towered over the construction site, its brightly lit windows beacons shining through the post rain fog. It drew me in. Rain or shine, it always felt like this. An impending feeling of dread. This was one of the best and worst parts of my week.
With a jagged noise, the hospital doors pulled open for me as I neared. The same colorful fake flowers in the lobby always greeted me. It was nice they tried to make the place seem friendlier, but at the end of the day, a hospital is still a hospital. A lobby guard swiped my I.D. and I was given a visitor’s pass with temporary permission to walk the halls.
The elevator zipped up to the 5th floor. As I turned along the corridor, the familiar sign indicating the “burn recovery unit” greeted me.
As I entered the room, I was startled by the voice of his nurse.
“Jeez!”
“Shit. I’m sorry. I thought he was alone.”
Laying down on the bed was my friend. Next to him was his nurse, come to change his bandages.
“You gonna leave the jar this time, or throw it out?” The nurse asked, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
I didn’t like that she was intruding on our weekly ritual. This time was sacred to me.
“I’ll remember this time,” I said flatly. I followed up with a quick “Sorry” just in case she decided that visiting hours were suddenly over.
“You in it?” I nodded my question at my friend. After a beat, he responded.
“Yeah.”
That usually was about as much as I could get out of him while his headset was on. It annoyed me. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what people used to think about me when they would try to engage me in conversation.
Sensing some tension, the nurse chimed in again, “He’s hiking in the Arctic right now. I haven’t been there, but from the description on the box, it looks like it takes intense concentration… and a warm winter jacket.”
The nurse smiled at her joke. It made me hate her more. But, as long as he’s distracted, I’m happy.
As I moved further into the room, the rest of his body became visible. You know how everyone has their own distinct smell? His had changed. It took a while to get used to, but it’s beginning to feel like him.
The bandage changing process is a particularly cruel one, but it has to be done. I’ve only seen it happen two or three times. Once before his headset, the rest after. VR caused my pain; VR eased his.
There’s some debate as to whether it’s better for a patient to quickly pull the wrapping off — like a bandaid — or slowly.
The nurse decided on the slow route, every now and again looking up to his mouth for a wince or clench of his jaw.
I swiped the biodegradable spoon from his untouched food tray and plopped down in the seat next to his bed. Everything was easier on this side. From this angle, he still resembled the man I’d run into in the hallways; a casual conversation as we fiddled with our keys. This side is where I spent most of my visitation time.
“Peanut butter?”
A half smile caused his headset to tilt upwards.
“My throat’s a little dry today.”
I unscrewed the cap, and helped myself. Thank god I didn’t spend the 15 bucks. The likelihood that he will take his headset off hovers somewhere around zero, so I ventured forward…
“I spent 15 bucks on this, one of us is going to enjoy it.” There’s something homey and childlike about peanut butter. It always reminded me of the PB&J’s you’d get in the cafeteria at school; the crust hardening after a day sitting underneath the plastic wrap.
“Anything wild happen around here today?” I asked.
No response. His smile had slid back down again; his lips pursed.
“He needs to concentrate. You feel the cold much more when you really play along.”
“That works for everyone?” I asked.
“Said to reduce pain by up to 50%. Haven’t seen a patient turn down a headset yet.”
The nurse continued to pull back the bandages. I watched in morbid fascination. It looked nothing like skin anymore, though the crusted blood suggested otherwise. His arms looked like twisted plastic, like an action figure melted by some sadistic child.
I found myself looking at his feet, detailing the way his toes had practically fused together. It reminded me of that old N64 game, Golden Eye, in the days before designers made hands with separate digits.
I felt sick.
Focus on the details. That’s how you’ll know it’s real and not virtual.
I stared at my spoon — at how the lick lines ran up the residual peanut butter. The edges were moist from my saliva, giving the brown an off-color, whitish hue.
As much as we like to praise our designers for all they’ve done, they’re really shit about the details.
The nurse gently removed another bandage. It clung to the skin. If you listened carefully enough, you could hear the tear of the wrapping.
With each pull, I flinched.
It’s impossible to believe that the weight of knowing your addiction harmed another human would ever go away.
End.
