Photo: © Depositphotos.com/alphaspirit
Written by Jess Sutich

Jess received the art above as part of Volume Ten, “The Challenge Edition,” in which contributors selected art for each other, and had the option of selecting rules for the piece to be created. Her partner chose the art above and gave her two rules:

• Read through missed connections on Craigslist — the opening paragraph must start with your favorite one
• One of the characters incessantly talks about the tall coffee they’re holding throughout

---

 

Missed Connection – W4M: I sat down next to you and I caught a crush vibe. I think maybe you saw the artwork I was editing on my phone? I got shy and didn’t say anything like a dumbass. Does anyone ever actually just start talking on a train, though? You’re a cutie. Hope you see this.

“Coffee?” Anna carried two coffees. Walter slammed his phone down. He still couldn’t believe the woman on the train left him a missed connection. AND thought he was cute. People didn’t usually refer to Walter as cute.

“They made a mistake and so I got an extra,” she said, “Yours has cream and sugar.”

Anna set her coffee on the desk situated next to Walter’s. Both had impressive computers with large screens. She wriggled a mouse to bring her monitor to life. A globe rotated solemnly.

“I don’t take cream and sugar. Just cream.” Walter looked at the cup with distaste.

“Do you take free things? Because it’s free.” The office was buzzing with early morning activity. Walter had clearly been settled in for a while. “You’re here early,” Anna noted.

Walter had been taking the early train for a month now just to run into the woman with the artwork and she had noticed! Her artwork was terrible but he loved that she was always working on it. Maybe he just didn’t understand the art, he thought. He needed to make sure to never try to discuss art with her in case she was brilliant and he just couldn’t tell.

“I came in early to finish a side project,” he told Anna, which was true. His early morning travels to see the Train Girl, were leading him to do extra work to kill the time. “Why do you get tall coffees? Why not a large?”

“It’s not the way you like it but you’re complaining that you don’t have more? What project? Did you suddenly become a go-getter, Walter?” Anna crashed down in her chair at her messy work station. She pulled powder sugar donuts out of a bag and started getting sugar everywhere.

“I prefer a large coffee. And the thing I’m working on is complicated.” He wanted to brag about his project. But he thought he would make her press to find out more. This would be good practice for him. The art of playing hard to get. The woman on the train didn’t need to know how eager he was. “How’s your sim going?”

“Fine, secret keeper. Let’s check on the masses.” She switched her view to bring up several spinning globes. She pulled up metrics on each. “Pretty much the same. Interestingly, the Lizard People and my Dolphins seem to worship a very similar God. I always get a kick out of that.”

“Is it the type of God who fucks with you by giving you all of the free coffee you want but he never gets your order right?”

“Enough with the coffee Walter. And their God is a she-beast, thank you very much. Perhaps one with fierce red hair,” Anna whipped her own red hair at this remark. A red alert flashed suddenly by one of her planets. “Hm. Disease is decimating the population on Artemus-4, I’m not sure they’ll make it. But I’m rooting for those mushy guys.” Anna pops a donut in her mouth and asks, “How about yours? How are the Humans?”

“Shockingly predictable. Each of my sims has the same business. Genocide, racism, misogyny, pollution, famine, religious wars, asshole billionaires,” he sips his coffee and winces, “Ugh. It’s luke-warm now.”

“No major differences from one to another?” Anna has powdered sugar all down her shirt. It makes Walter smile. What a smart mess Anna is. He wonders if the Train Girl will be smart.

“Nope. They muck about for a while running from predators and then they storm forward with science and technology without losing their dumb attachment to religion, and then they ruin the planet. It ends in one of three ways each time, bomb, disease, ecological disaster.” Walter walks across the room and pops his cup of lousy coffee into the microwave to heat up.

“You’re heating it up?”

“It was free.” The microwave beeps and he pulls it out to sip and burns his tongue. “Ow, shit. This damn cursed coffee!”

“Crap on a crust, Walter. You are such a curmudgeon. C’mon. What project is dragging you out of bed in the morning?”

“Fine. I’ll tell you.” He can’t wait to tell her. “I created an add on module last night. I decided to give the humans a real heaven and a hell.”

“You built heaven and hell? That’s kind of sick.” Anna chases her donuts with a gulp of coffee.

“They believe in a God. I figured I would be one. He that art Walt. Drinker of the bad tall coffee.” It popped into his head on the train one morning while he tried to will the Train Girl to talk to him.

“There’s no afterlife. Why add that to the simulation? It’s going to take up a lot of computer power.” Anna was being such a rigid thinker right now and it was bugging him.

“They aren’t in the base reality so when they “die” we can take their consciousness and do whatever we want. We could put them in a room that only has luke-warm coffee for eternity. We could make them babies that have to start all over again. We could create any of the dumb things they think are true!”

“I could set up one of my Lizard People with one of my Dolphins for a date!” Anna laughed– finally, Walter thought–and powder sugar flew in a puff from her mouth. “But it’s not ethical. We aren’t Gods. We’re Tier-3 programmers.”

“Is it ethical to let a world exist where people can be terrible and benefit from being terrible and then die with no punishment?” The mixed feedback from Anna was making him second-guess his chances with the Train Girl and he didn’t like that feeling.

“When programmers begin to feel like Gods, we get into trouble. That’s my only point.” Anna set to marking down the stats on her worlds.

“I designed a program I call The Scale. It basically assesses the number of positive feeling other Humans have for you and weighs them against the number of negative feelings they have. Then, when they die, they either go to angel land, or they are tortured forever.” Walter sipped his coffee, “This definitely tastes like styrofoam.”

“It sounds like you designed a pretty Christian-esque afterlife,” Anna remarked.

“It sets up the best punishment/reward paradigm.” The Train Girl would get it Walt thought. “I might even choose an arbitrary thing that sends you direct to hell. Like, people who stop right at the top of an escalator to figure out where they are. Or maybe anyone who dies today should go to hell because I’m having to drink this crappy coffee.” Walt was winging it now and was pretty sure Train Girl would love it.

“You’re an asshole, Walt.” Anna laughed about it. Conversations like this never bothered her and he was annoyed by her confidence now.

“I’m going to get a better coffee. Do you want me to grab you a real coffee?” Anna just gave him the finger, still chuckling.

He stepped outside and walked as he composed messages to the Train Girl:
Did you know that by day, I’m a God?
Glad you caught the crush vibe I was sending…
I’d love to hear about your art. I’m also a “creative type”

He erased all of them. Why was he such an awkward ass? He tipped his free tall coffee back from Anna and tossed it in the trash. He then stepped out to cross the street and was plowed by a cross-town bus.

When he opened his eyes, he sat in a white room at a desk. Faint ones and zeros sped across all surfaces. It wasn’t a hospital. A woman walked in. She looked very similar to the Train Girl.

“Hello Walt. Welcome to your judgement. We have just one question.” She swiped her hand across the surface of the desk and two paintings we suddenly hanging next to one another on the wall behind her.

“Which one of these two paintings is good art?” She quietly folded her hands and smiled passively.

“Damn it,” he thought.