Toronto Isn’t Real and Other Metropolitan Anomalies

TORONTO ISN'T REAL AND OTHER METROPOLITAN ANOMALIES

by A.D. Sui

Content warnings: drug use, suicide, mental illness

ill see you at the top 

or bottom

your bottom

this better work…

i did the math 😉 

if i die in canada ill die in real life

this isnt canada

youre just seeing how far the rabbit hole goes

🙂

🙂

•••

I pass the joint to Sandra, and she takes a deep drag before breaking into a cough. We both laugh, our backs flat against the warm roof of her apartment. It’s a perfect  muggy August night. The cicada screams blur together with the hum of the Gardiner Expressway.

“What would you do if you found out this was all a simulation?” Sandra asks. 

I put the joint out in the ashtray. “I would cut you off for the night. You’re baked.” 

“No, I’m serious.” She presses up on her elbows, “If you knew, with near certainty that none of this was real, what would you do? Would you still go to your shitty job every day? Would you try to break out? Would you set the city on fire?”

“Glad to know you think my job is shitty.” 

Sandra nudges me with a bony elbow. “You know what I mean.” 

I don’t have an answer. Unlike Sandra I’m perfectly fine with how things are, simulation or not. I’ve got no itch to scratch, no dissatisfaction to resolve. This world, this city, is the way it is, and I’m not prone to imagining anything otherwise. I turn and look at Sandra, who’s already fallen asleep. 

We have all the time in the world.

•••

I have one psychotic break and suddenly I’m a “threat to myself and others.” No shoelaces, no drawstrings, no long sleeves on hoodies. You’d think stripping someone down to their birthday suit and confiscating all their belongings would be worse for their mental health than whatever they already have brewing, but I’m no licensed specialist. 

Then there’s Ethan. Sandra’s Ethan.

He gives me a watered-down smile and signs me out of my forty-eight hour hold like a true gentleman. He brings a gloriously bitter coffee with him and if he wasn’t my dead best-friend’s husband, I’d blow him on the spot. Once we’re outside, he lights my cigarette and only then asks, “Thea, what the actual fuck happened?” 

I take a drag from my cigarette and stare at a passing streetcar. I have no answer I would voluntarily surrender to Ethan.

“You know how it looks,” Ethan doesn’t let up, “Cops found you on the bridge at four in the morning, clambering over the railing and yelling about how Toronto isn’t real, and we’re all living in a simulation. Ring a bell?”

I ash the cigarette and stare at the spot where I’d been biting the filter. “I’m not suicidal.” 

“Thea, it’s been a year. She’s gone, okay? You have to move on. I get it, of all the people in the world, I get it. I mourned her. I went to therapy. I got better. This is—” 

“I’m going home.” I chuck the butt into the sewer and pick up the pace until my strides are at their longest. Ethan is half a foot taller; he has no trouble keeping up. 

What Ethan is (very insensitively) referring to in the “moving on” department is Sandra’s so-called suicide a little over a year ago. I say “so-called” because Sandra had absolutely no reason to kill herself. Sandra, the eerily brilliant Sandra, worked for the Physics Department at the University of Toronto. She was working on turning the Simulation Hypothesis into an actual hypothesis instead of just a thought experiment that dude-bros toss around to sound smart over beers. Who doesn’t like to quote the Matrix and imagine that we live in a virtually simulated reality? 

The issue, of course, with the Simulation Hypothesis is that there is no tangible way to test it, making it more of a half-baked philosophical argument than a functional scientific theory. But with a little help from Bayesian statistics and a lot of late nights with the boys from the High-Energy Physics group Sandra was making some actual progress. 

“You should see someone about this,” Ethan says in a tone that indicates he’s said the same thing five times now and I give him a curt nod. “You’re not coping.”

So, you see, it makes absolutely no sense that Sandra took a swan dive off the Bloor Viaduct. It makes even less sense that a year after her death I got a text-message from her number:

toronto isn’t real

•••

Halfway between Broadview and Castle Frank stations there are a glorious twenty seconds when train runs outside, along suspended tracks below the Bloor Viaduct, and you have reception. If you’re smart like me, you pre-type your messages to your boss (about being late) when your train is still inside the tunnel and then deploy them, like messenger pigeons, the moment you see sky. My finger freezes on the send button because I receive the impossible text:

thea 🙂

we need to talk

Sandra’s name pops up as the sender. 

Two lines, and then I’m underground again. Any other day I’d dismiss it as a prank. A gross attempt to prey on a grieving friend for a cheap chuckle. But the small hairs on the nape of my neck stand up and I get a feeling. It’s the sort of feeling that you get before an earthquake or a solar eclipse—something’s not right. 

There’s a bitter ache in my stomach, and I think I’m going to hurl. I jump up from my seat and sprint towards the doors. Right before the two halves close, I squeeze through and on to the Broadview platform. Up the stairs (never the escalator; it’s always broken). Two flights. Through the glass doors. Into the rain. The street smells of wet asphalt and grime. For a moment, I stare at the message like I’m illiterate. I type:

thea 🙂

we need to talk

leave me the fuck alone you creep. 

show some respect

I fight the urge to block the number and shove the phone away. It can wait. I’m late for work and I never sent the message to my boss. And look, my Presto card is once again bone dry. 

Continued in Augur Magazine Issue 5.2...