Everyone during COVID, especially those with school or work responsibilities that required presence, Zoomed — often hours each day. We liked the easy atmosphere wearing fleecy bottoms, casual tops, and no hard shoes – all slippers and snuggle wear. Sometimes our ears ached from the pressure of headphones. Sometimes our backs ached because it was the professionals on the other zoom with the fancy Aeron chairs. Often our eyes ached from staring, focused just between reading distance and working at a counter. Blue light glasses helped. But it was the brain fatigue that would not go away. It wasn’t being tired; sleep would not restore the alterness that makes living so exciting.

As always, the internet was awash with cures and remedies, none of the promoters aware of the irony of using the tool that was the cause of the problem to cure the problem. Likewise, newspapers and magazines published hints and hacks to a smaller audience. Throughout, however, just simply accommodating the technology never entered the discussion. There must be a solution. The symptom was known, the cause identified, but the reason for the reaction remained a mystery.

Focused on the screen we saw a simulacrum of reality. A talking head, badly lighted, often ill positioned in the screen, with a background or often a simulated background. We focused on the speaker as we do when in the classroom or meeting room, attended to what we thought was important. All the while, unnoticed but still aware, the synchronization between the voice and the image drifted, “Did I catch that word right? The lips are moving to another word. Decide now! Audio or video?” And with the image, “Am I seeing divine intervention? Is that a halo? Can the wind outside or fan in the room cause the books to ripple like that on the bookcase? Those palm trees are blowing – they have been the whole time, but why hasn’t the sun set it’s still int he same place? George, of course, has a river view from his office — wait, we are all at home – the river is downtown! Tukey claims half a facial expression is enough for us to recreate the whole face but I can’t even read the expression with less than half a face disappearing each time Stacy shakes her head. There’s a face I recognize in a little box. I never knew “Sherry” was “Sheherazade”. Really? And did Lachlan really read all those books on the shelves behind? Our brains, unaware to us, patch the simulacrum to correct the technology’s approximation and our memories struggled to match the person with their presentation from our physical lives.

Dementia in one’s partner is the same. The brain fatigue is the same. Constantly patching reality to come to a state where it was once so easy to agree upon. There are two realities or more, perhaps a multiverse. Something just said is forgotten, or worse, misremembered but remembered as true. It is not a simulacrum all the real world is here. And a real world is there too. The spurious noises, the wind moving the tree branches, the sun blotted by a cloud. But the reality of human action and promise is fleeting. Misplacing something is fine, because I will be happy when I find it. But misplacing something and believing I put it there, not even questioning why it was in such an odd place, creates a new reality. Negotiating these realities, what is true to both of us, what has who misremembered makes making reality constant hard work.