Another Self
From Pulp Literature Issue 45, Soramimi Hanarejima‘s ‘Life After Bifurcation’ asks us to consider what it means to share ourselves with others. An honourable mention in our 2024 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize, enjoy the opening of ‘Life After Bifurcation’ below, then read the rest in Issue 45, Winter 2025.
Life After Bifurcation
by Soramimi Hanarejima
1. Coping
Afraid that our most savage argument yet portends the coming demise of our friendship, I use my emergency contact privileges to access your archive of selves then download the latest backup. This way I can hold on to the person you were before we said all those terrible things to each other—or at least the distillation of that person into a data file. Though far from free of discontents with me, this version of you from two days ago is unadulterated by the ugly mess that’s exploded between us, and I take solace in this file, like it’s a memento or talisman.
2. The Simulation
It only takes a couple days for curiosity to get the better of me, and I run the backup on a mind emulator, just to see what that’s like. The result is amazing. Even as a synthesized voice from my computer’s speakers, the simulation is a convincing rendition of you, authentically wielding your incisive wit and acerbic humour—with, of course, none of the acrimony unleashed by the argument.
Keen to find out how much the simulation is like you, I carry on conversations with aer about classic movies, video games, and philosophical quandaries — the things we’re forever talking about. Aer sentiments are pretty much the same as yours, though sometimes expressed in unusual turns of phrase. So I get aer take on new things: situations at work, political drama in the news, the latest chapter in the novel I’m reading, that condominium complex coming up by the forest preserve. Whatever I bring up, ae always responds in a way that sounds just like you, and the consistency is ever a delight, like I’ve got a doppelganger of you at my disposal—at home, and on the go in my smartglasses.
Read the rest in Pulp Literature Issue 45, Winter 2025!
Looking for contest glory for yourself? There’s still time to enter the 2025 Magpie Award for Poetry, but be quick! This contest closes April 15th, 2025.
Ever fascinated by the role storytelling plays in sense-making, Soramimi Hanarejima writes fanciful fiction in hopes of encountering insight and delight. Some of the results can be found in Soramimi’s neuropunk story collection Literary Devices for Coping. A multiple-time finalist in our fiction contests, you can find Soramimi’s previous Pulp Lit stories in issues 17 (Winter 2018), 28 (Autumn 2020), 35 (Summer 2022), and 39 (Summer 2023).
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