It feels like fate when Lucy sees the billboard flash neon against night as she stumbles out of the reunion trashed on vodka and self-loathing.
Lucy has seen the name floating around the news: Optime, pronounced “opti-me”, is the pet project of some tech mogul with a biohacking obsession. She’d dismissed it as some woo-woo self-help fad, but now thirty-four tugs at her frown lines, and everyone at the reunion has partners, kids, houses, high-powered careers. There is Keisha’s new Netflix show, Naomi’s billionaire husband, Mayumi’s Broadway debut. Lucy has a gouty cat, a boss who hates her, and a cockroach infestation that has somehow spread to her bedroom.
Lucy rarely auditions. When she gets home, she wipes out on her bed with her socks still on and dreams late into morning. A casualty of the drama-school-to-bartender pipeline — that’s what her cohort calls people like her. Not to her face, but they say:
I’m surprised you haven’t blown up yet.
I thought you’d be the next big thing.
Where did you go?
I thought you died.
I thought you disappeared
Shrank
Shriveled into the cracks of the world
Like bleached mold
A quick Google search tells Lucy the nearest Optime center is in the Arts District and open 24/7. The next bus in that direction is in twenty minutes.
Her high heels rub blisters into her skin as she clacks down the empty, potholed street. It is the kind of dark that could swallow a woman walking alone, make her the star of next year’s favorite true crime podcast. But then the Optime center rises above the asphalt, an ovoid glass-and-steel structure glowing pink against night black.
The waiting room smells like sandalwood and something sickly sweet. The receptionist seems glued to her desk. She waves Lucy off to a tablet with all the treatment options. Lucy scrolls past the $10,000 platinum yearly membership down to the cheapest option: one three-hour session for $350. The balance of her checking account.
There is a release form. The process is simple: merge with the best version of you for three hours, with their consent, of course. This you is chosen by Optime’s proprietary AI from millions of alternate yous in millions of alternate universes. Lucy skims over the risks — headaches, hypertension, stroke, acute angle-closure glaucoma, increased suicidality — and signs.
Lucy meets the technician in a small room packed with machines. A prick in the arm, a drop of blood, a full-body scan, and some notes typed into a computer later, the technician tells her to wait.
She waits. And waits. And soon it is morning and she wonders if this was all a scam as she dozes off. It is just past six when the technician yawns into the room and Lucy nods awake. Her session is ready.
The technician leads Lucy down a dim hallway to a soundproof pod with a soft chair and a First-Person Experiential helmet. She settles into the chair. The room smells of Lysol and bergamot. Pink, soft, womblike.
The helmet is made for bigger heads. No worries, the technician says. It is adjustable. They tighten it for her, and she puts it on. A veil of colorful pixels showers her eyes before they form the Optime logo, then fade to a calm blue.
Close your eyes, says the helmet, so Lucy does, and time blurs.
The first sound she hears is a blender, whirring.
A kiss, just a peck.
Soft. Silk, perhaps.
Lucy is making a smoothie on a roomy Carrera marble kitchen island. No, her husband is making her a smoothie to go, she is late for set. She runs in her stylish, billowing loungewear through
A cozy Spanish-style bungalow with a tiled pool in a leafy, earthy courtyard.
Lucy hops into her lime green Mini-Cooper convertible. The studio is a half-hour away. She opens the top and the sun warms her cheeks.
Lucy is first on the call sheet. Hair and makeup usher her into a plush chair and sponge foundation onto her face. Her co-star, her childhood celebrity crush, invites her to his trailer to run lines. On the soundstage, the gaffer lights her, the lens is on her, the director guides her gently through the scene. She is his star.
Lights, camera, action!
Lucy acts.
She acts with every atom of energy in her being.
The script flows through her, scripture
she becomes the story,
her face the chisel,
her body the sculpture.
The camera captures it all.
She is radiant.
She shines.
Lucy is back in the soft pink pod in the chair with a helmet on. She smells Lysol and Bergamot, she takes the helmet off and shakes out her limp, sweaty hair. Her cheeks are cold, and she is dull again, so unbearably dull.
The next morning she wakes up to a cockroach on her arm and the gouty cat rubbing its cheek against her toes.
She goes to work. Her boss tells her she loads the dishwasher wrong, and shows her how to do it. It is the same way she does it, but if she points this out her boss will take away her tips again. And she needs those tips. She needs to go back.
She saves every dollar she can. She eats rice and beans at home and instant noodles at work. She stops going out with friends and instead she sneaks tequila pulls at the bar. She takes shorter showers, spends dark nights bathed in the glow of her phone.
A month later Lucy has $350 in her checking account again, and she puts on her comfy sneakers and goes back to Optime.
They are filming in Iceland now, production trucks and tents in waves of green and ancient rock. Her husband texts her an I love you and a picture of the cat. It is cold, so there is an assistant whose job is to keep a warm blanket ready for Lucy at all times.
But Lucy does not feel cold.
Lucy does not feel cold when she shines,
when she is the story,
her radiance is heat,
and everyone admires her radiance,
the crew, the actors, the director yells
Cut!
Her shine sweetens under her co-star’s molasses gaze.
Then she is back in the womb-like pod again, and her checking account is empty again, and before she sleeps she scatters roach pellets on the floor around her bed. Tomorrow she must go back to work.
Every time she saves enough money she returns to the pod, and for a moment that feels both like nothing and forever, she shines. She does what she loves, she loves, is loved, is adored. She fulfills all the potential she has wasted in this life. And each time she takes off the helmet she feels duller than before, so impossibly dull she thinks might vanish into nothing.
She loses weight. It’s funny, she’s always wanted to lose five pounds. Now that she has, she doesn’t care. Her boss comments on her weight, tells her men don’t like skinny girls. The gouty cat whines for attention when she gets home, but she has never been so tired in her life. She collapses into her bed and dreams she is not herself.
Lucy goes back to the pod.
The headaches start, both in the pod and outside. In both realities she pops an Ibuprofen and ignores them. At the bar she downs them with tequila shots. On set the shine of lights soothes the pounding in her skull, at least until the camera cuts.
At the premiere party, her co-star puts his hand on her knee.
He’s married too, but she’s dreamed of fucking him since she was twelve so
she leans in and kisses him,
drinks his stubble breath of single malt and stale cigars.
He is bad at sex.
Maybe it’s because he hasn’t had to try in twenty years.
He doesn’t start now.
He puts on headphones, lays on his back, and makes her do all the work.
He doesn’t kiss her again
Lucy goes home to her husband, who is asleep with the gouty cat.
She scrubs herself clean in the shower and lays down next to him,
wraps her arms around him,
tells herself she’ll never betray him again.
And then her time is up, and she is out of money.
Lucy cuts limes. The bar is out of finger cots and the acid juice seeps into the dozens of tiny, invisible abrasions in her skin from the knives and glasses and other sharp, ordinary things.
The next time Lucy returns to the pod, the technician tells her Optime has selected a different reality for her.
Why?
That self is no longer the optimal you.
When Lucy dons the helmet, she lives in a penthouse apartment. She is dating a plant influencer with tattoos and a sharp jawline. He smells like roses and wears overalls. She has a steady recurring role on an HBO show. The next season won’t shoot until summer, so Lucy has a lot of free time right now, which she spends gardening with her boyfriend.
Lucy thinks of her other self’s husband and the cat, of the Spanish bungalow with the plunge pool she’s never used.
Lucy tears the helmet off. She wants the other life back. She asks the technician what happened to her other self, the one she’s been visiting for the last year.
If you’re not satisfied with this universe, we can find you another.
No, Lucy says, I want the first one.
The technician shrugs. I’m sorry, we can’t do that.
I want to go back. I need to go back.
She grabs the technician by his shoulders before she sees the flicker of fear in his eyes, before he pushes her off him and presses the call button for security, before a stoic guard escorts her out of the soft light into harsh day.
Lucy’s brain knows that life does not belong to her. Not really. But her heart will rip itself to shreds if she cannot taste it again.
The headache cleaves her skull open on her way home. As she turns on the lights, baby cockroaches skitter into the cracks of her kitchen cabinets. She twists open her bottle of Ibuprofen. Empty.
She lays on her bed and stares at the water damage on her ceiling. Her head pounds behind her eyes like her brain wants out. With great effort, the gouty cat leaps onto the bed and sticks a wobbly landing. She takes it under her arm and it nuzzles the crook of her elbow. Lucy melts a little. Lately, she hasn’t given the cat the affection it needs.
When she wakes in the morning, it is cold. Lucy misses the steady warmth of her husband’s arms
not her husband
not her life
before she remembers the emptiness of her checking account. She doesn’t want to tally the total she spent at Optime last year. That was the fuck-you money she’d planned to save so she could finally leave her horrible job. Now she will have to stay.
She thinks of the Spanish bungalow, the pool she never swam in. When she rolls over the cat’s stiff body falls off the bed and cockroaches swarm it.
She cooks eggs. One cracks rotten into her pan. She goes to work. Her boss berates her for peeling lemons wrong. Acid juice stings her fingertips. She wonders if her other self’s husband found out about the affair. She wonders if they are still together, or if he has left her. She wonders if scandal tore through her other self’s career, branded her red-hot slut, whore, homewrecker, heartbreaker. She wonders if her other self has moved out of the Spanish bungalow she can no longer afford
and into a dingy furnished studio with popcorn ceilings and
neighbors who smoke so much weed she drowns in the stench or
into her childhood bedroom with posters of her co-star peeling off the walls or
to a small town where she dyes her hair and she can finally be nobody or
if she is just dead
a car crash, maybe, or
Lucy once thought of walking into the ocean
somewhere pretty like Malibu
and letting the waves take her
the thought opens a black hole in her chest
births a hunger clawing in her gut
the hunger says do it all
do anything you can to stop thinking about
that life that isn’t yours
that is no longer hers
that is gone
She fills her hours with distractions
She drinks
She goes out dancing
pops pills that make her feel like melted happiness
She fucks without feeling
but it keeps her body in motion
keeps her away from her thoughts
anything to keep her body from the fatal stillness of yearning
but the hangovers split her head open
and her belly is on fire
She takes ten days of pills, antibiotics
and decides
never again
So she starts to run
at first a mile a day knocks all thoughts from her head
then one mile isn’t enough
ad she needs six, seven, eight
She reads
at first the classics, then those fantasy sagas with sultry fairy kings
she takes classes
learns to shape an ashtray with mud
to step one-two in sync with her salsa partner
She reaches out to her friends who ask her
Where have you been?
We worried when you disappeared
We worried you died
She braces for their reproach but
their arms are inviting and
they are happy to have her back.
They ask
Are you okay?
and Lucy says, I think so
They ask,
Why don’t you audition anymore?
and Lucy asks herself
Why don’t I?
so Lucy dusts off her headshot
and now when she looks at her face she thinks
Okay
and she sends it
into
the
ether
***
Lucy books an audition.
It is her first audition in months, maybe even a year. It is for a TV show, one of the lead roles. She has never been a lead before, except once. And that wasn’t really her.
She recalls shining in the studio
in Iceland
all eyes on her
and when her moment comes
her moment to shine
the story flows through her
and her face becomes chisel
and her body becomes sculpture.
and she shines.
Lucy shines.
She gets the part.
On the morning of her first day she makes herself a smoothie.
Her first paycheck arrives and she is Demeter in spring.
She tells her boss to shove the lemon peeler up his ass
She moves out of the cockroach-infested apartment.
She crawls her way out of the cracks of the world.
The show is a hit.
The network orders seasons two and three and
suddenly, she has fans.
Suddenly she has fame, a following, and a fortune.
She moves into a lovely mid-century modern in the hills. No pool, just a hot tub and mature fruit trees, and six raised garden beds.
She dates.
She falls in love with a cinematographer.
He moves in.
He makes her pancakes and laughs at her jokes, and when she shines, he does too.
They adopt two cats, a bonded sibling pair
She gardens.
The hole in her chest shrinks.
The hunger abates.
One day Lucy gets a call from Optime.
Will she consent to lending her experience to a suboptimal version of herself?
Lucy hesitates. All her unanswered questions flood back in. What happened to
her other self’s marriage
her other self’s career
her other self’s home
her other self?
You will hardly notice the intrusion, the caller says. Maybe a headache here or there, nothing an over-the-counter painkiller won’t fix. Plus, you will get thirty percent of each session fee.
The questions hover behind her teeth. She must bite them back or spit them out.
Then the caller says:
It made all the difference for you.
The questions slide down her throat like sucked-slim lozenges
and Lucy says yes.
