The Calibration
Wes paced his room, replaying the conversation he’d overheard outside the simulation suite.
“I’m adapting the protocol.”
The words refused to leave him alone. What exactly was there to adapt?
The simulations weren’t Voss’s memories to change. Every session had operated within the same boundaries from the beginning. Existing memories only. No rewriting history. No impossible alternatives. The point had never been to escape reality. It had been to confront it.
A knock interrupted his thoughts. Something slid beneath the door. Wes crossed the room and bent to pick it up.
Answers. Tonight. 10:00 PM. Simulation Room.
Follow Wes's journey. A new chapter arrives every Saturday.
He read the note twice before setting it on the desk. Evenings were meant for reflection. Every patient was encouraged to spend the hours after a session allowing the experience to settle before returning the following day. Voss had insisted on that routine from the beginning. Whatever this was, it wasn’t routine.
For several minutes Wes stood staring at the note. If Voss had changed the rules once, what guarantee was there that he wouldn’t change them again? Yet walking away meant returning to prison and abandoning the only path that had given him any hope of rebuilding his life.
At two minutes before ten, he slipped the note into his pocket and left his room.
The simulation room felt untouched by the passing hours. Without windows there was no sense of evening, only the familiar hum of machinery and the sterile brightness of fluorescent lights reflecting from polished concrete floors.
Voss stood behind his workstation, looking remarkably different from the anxious man Wes had glimpsed after the glitch had occurred earlier that afternoon. His lab coat was freshly pressed, his tie straight, his hair neatly combed. Only the tiredness around his eyes hinted that anything had happened at all.
“Mr. Weaver,” he said, gesturing toward the chair opposite his desk. “Please.”
Wes remained standing.
“I overheard your conversation.”
“I assumed you might.”
“You said you were changing the protocol.”
Voss glanced toward the monitor before answering.
“The previous session revealed behaviour we hadn’t anticipated. We spent the afternoon reviewing the data.”
“And?”
“And we concluded the protocol needed to evolve.”
Wes folded his arms.
“You told me these simulations couldn’t change my memories.”
“They can’t.”
“Then what are you changing?”
Voss leaned back in his chair.
“When you remember the morning you were arrested, what do you remember?”
“The kitchen.”
“What else?”
“Marty. Theresa. Nora.”
“And what happens while you’re remembering them?”
Wes frowned.
“My chest tightens.”
“What else?”
“My breathing changes. My stomach lurches. My hands shake.”
Voss nodded.
“The memory isn’t only a collection of facts. Before you’ve consciously thought about any of it, your body has already concluded you’re in danger.”
“So you’re trying to stop that?”
“I’m trying to determine whether it can be reduced.”
“You mean erased.”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
“If you leave this program remembering different events than the ones you lived, then I’ve failed completely. I’m not interested in rewriting your past.”
“Then what?”
Voss was quiet for a moment.
“Some memories become so heavy they begin pulling everything else into their orbit. Sleep. Relationships. Decisions. Years pass, but your nervous system never receives permission to stand down. The event ends. The emergency doesn’t.”
Silence settled between them.
“And you think you can change that?”
“I think we can test it.”
Wes studied him.
“If you change how I feel about the worst day of my life... how do I know I’ll still be me?”
For the first time since he’d entered the room, Voss looked genuinely uncertain.
“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “I only know the version of you sitting here doesn’t want to carry this guilt and shame for the rest of his life.”
Neither of them spoke. Finally Voss rose from his chair.
“You don’t have to continue. If you’d rather complete your sentence conventionally, I’ll notify the board in the morning.”
He stepped toward the harness and rested a hand against one of the support arms.
“The choice is yours.”
Wes looked at the suspended frame. He thought about Theresa. He thought about Nora.
He thought about waking from the dream only hours earlier believing, for the first time in years, that becoming whole again might actually be possible.
Whatever Voss was asking frightened him. So did the alternative.
“I’ll do it.”
The kitchen materialized around him with unsettling precision.
Morning light spilled across the countertops. His coffee mug sat beside the sink exactly where he’d left it. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked. Pipes groaned softly inside the walls. The refrigerator hummed quietly in the corner. Everything occupied its proper place.
Only something felt... different.
The colours seemed muted somehow. The sunlight lacked warmth. Even the smell of coffee felt strangely distant, as though the memory had been drained of something he couldn’t quite identify.
Then came the knock. It echoed through the house. His body prepared itself.\ Or rather... it tried to.
He waited for the familiar tightening in his chest. Nothing. He flexed his fingers. Dry. No trembling. He drew another slow breath, expecting the panic to catch up with him. It never did.
“I’ll get it,” he called.
He opened the door. Marty stood on the porch exactly as he remembered.
“Wes,” he said softly. “You should’ve asked me.”
For just a moment Marty reached toward him, then let his hand fall back to his side. Wes remembered how those words had crushed him the first time. He searched for the shame. Nothing. Not relief. Relief would still have been a feeling. There was simply... space.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Theresa appeared with Nora balanced against her hip. For a moment Wes forgot Marty entirely.
She looked exactly as she always had. The oversized blue sweater she’d stolen from his side of the closet. The loose strand of hair forever slipping across her face. A faint dusting of flour clung to one sleeve. She must have been making Nora breakfast before getting her up. He’d never noticed it before.
She looked at him with quiet concern. He recognized every detail of her face. Every tiny expression. Every movement. He knew those details had once been enough to undo him. Now they simply existed.
A second figure stepped onto the porch.
“Mr. Weaver,” the officer said calmly. “We have a warrant for your arrest.”
The edges of the room shimmered. The colours faded. The walls dissolved into static. The kitchen collapsed around him.
Wes opened his eyes inside the harness. He looked immediately toward Voss.
“We didn’t finish.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
Voss disconnected the neural leads one at a time.
“That’s enough for tonight.”
“You barely let it play.”
“I know.”
“Was it supposed to happen like that?”
Voss paused before answering.
“I’d like you to sleep before we continue.”
“And tomorrow?”
“We’ll continue tomorrow.”
Nothing more.
Back in his room, Wes sat quietly on the edge of the bed. He closed his eyes and pictured Theresa. Her smile came instantly. Her laugh.
The first time she’d told him she loved him. Their wedding. Sunday mornings drinking coffee together. Nora asleep on his chest after another nightmare. The morning of the arrest.
Every memory arrived exactly as it always had. He waited for the grief. For the guilt. For the ache that had lived beneath his ribs for years.
Nothing came.
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Beginning | ← The Threshold |
If you could keep every memory but lose the emotional weight attached to it, would you?
I think a lot of us experience moments that seem small from the outside but quietly change the way we move through the world.
Where the Light Is is a story about memory, guilt, identity, and what happens when we confuse self-erasure for love.
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