Forty-Eight Minutes at the Trainview Café by M. Bennardo (Asimov’s SF, November-December 2022) is set in a future where humanity has uploaded itself to a virtual reality where people spend their time experiencing a variety of simulations:
Closing his eyes, Felix took a sip of the tea, held it in his mouth, and felt its warmth diffuse through his sinuses. It was an incredible detail, just like every other detail in the place. The feeling of physical presence, of reality, of existential weight. He could not deny that the Trainview Café was utterly unlike any other simulation program he had experienced in the decades since he had left his own human body behind. But all the same, Felix couldn’t see what all of these finely turned details added up to. What was the point, except to remind him of what he no longer was?
Slowly, Felix inverted the paper cup over the edge of the platform. Steam rose hissing as the remaining tea splattered onto the gravel below, staining it dark gray. He squashed the paper cup and threw it down onto the tracks, wondering how much longer he had to wait before he would be disconnected. He vaguely recalled that the program had charged him for forty-eight minutes. It was an unusual increment of time, but it had been the only one available. And it had been expensive, too: more expensive than twelve hours in most other high-end simulations. Yet, here he was, only twenty minutes in and already bored. p. 118
Felix eventually becomes so bored that he goes down to the tracks and lies there, waiting for the next train to come—but, before this can happen, he is asked by a woman to move. She adds that his behaviour is spoiling the simulation for everyone else and, if he doesn’t do as he is told, she will disconnect him.
Felix gets back on to the platform and ends up having a conversation with the woman, Nancy, who tries to explain to him that the simulation is not event driven but is dedicated to detail. She then takes him to see goldfinches at a birdfeeder, explaining that the birds are rendered at close to cellular level, never repeating themselves or looping as would be the case in other simulations (“Practically speaking, at every level above the size of a cell, they are real birds”). Felix doesn’t get it, but the challenge of trying to understand what other visitors are getting from the simulation breaks through the ennui he has recently been experiencing (something highlighted when he revisits the Blue Glacier climbing simulation, an experience that was thrilling the first time he made the ascent but has now lost its attraction).
Felix subsequently makes another visit to the Train Station simulation, and once again upsets the people there by banging on the window and frightening the goldfinches away. Then, on his next trip, he arranges to meet Nancy, and they have a long back and forth conversation about the simulation and the philosophy behind it. Nancy suggests that, if he wants to spend more time there, he could become an admin. Felix declines. Then Nancy offers to show him one of the hacks that she and the other admins have been working on—the ability to get on an outbound train and stay there all night until they return to the train station the next day (this enables the users to permanently stay in the simulation, which would otherwise be a very expensive proposition due to the processing power required).
There are shortcomings to this hack, however, as Felix finds out when they both set off on the “Night Train” and he is told to close his eyes and keep them closed. When he does, Felix experiences the motion and sound of the train, but (spoiler) he is unable to just lie there and enjoy the limited experience and, when he eventually opens his eyes, Felix finds himself in an unsettling low-resolution world of lines and unfilled spaces, an image that reveals the “endless nightmare” that he and (I think) all uploaded humans are trapped in.
This is a slickly told story—Bennardo has a concise and transparent style—and the concept is pretty neat. That said, I don’t think the ending is as good as the rest of it, possibly because it doesn’t clearly make its point. (Is this his personal nightmare or one for humanity? Do people really desire thrills or normal life?) Not bad at all, though, and I’ll be interested to see more work from this writer.
*** (Good). 6,950 words. Story link.