Penelope was fading fast, but I agreed to meet her nonetheless. She'd asked to meet in a café rather than a bar, but I could always get a beer afterwards, so I arrived at more or less the time she suggested. It was a bit quiet for my taste; a few couples sat opposite each other in occasional conversation, but a lot of people sat alone, staring at their phones. I saw another insubstantial woman and almost sat opposite her before I realised my mistake. Penelope was at a small table in the corner, almost invisible out of the light.
        There is a beauty in this condition. As I took in the features of my former lover, I could also see the world through her. She made no attempt to use gloves and veils to hide herself--it didn't work for long, and faders soon lost interest in disguise anyway. They tended to have a serenity about them, which almost made them easier to identify than their translucence. If it happened to me I would fight it, rail against nature and somehow bring myself back through force of will; but as I studied Penelope I saw no hint of struggle. She had always been pale, but now she was half-invisible, an outline against the back of the chair that wasn't fully filled in. She had always dyed her hair jet-black, but now she had brown roots, although they were difficult to make out against the similar colour of the wallpaper behind her. I guessed that she still had a few weeks before she vanished completely.
        "Thank you for meeting me," she said. Her voice was quiet, but I didn't yet have to strain to hear it.
        "That's okay," I said. "I've got half an hour."
        "You can see what's happening to me."
        "I'm sorry."
        She waved my apology away, as if it were smoke hanging in the air. "I'm afraid I'm being selfish. I've come for your help."
        I noticed that she didn't bother asking what I'd been up to in the last five years. "Anything," I said, wondering what she wanted and how I could get out of it.
        "I'll be gone in a month," she said. "Or thereabouts. There won't be a trace of me left. I'll soon be forgotten."
        I was about to deny this, but something stopped me. She wasn't here for platitudes or sympathy, and wouldn't appreciate empty assurances. I studied her face again, trying to fill in the gaps, make her more real. She had a small scar above her eye from when she had chickenpox as a child; I could still see it. The freckle on her left cheek still showed; she could never decide whether to disguise or enhance it, but she wore no make-up now. She still wore black, and already her t-shirt seemed to hang on her rather than being worn. Before long she would find it less and less easy to keep anything on, and eventually her clothes would simply drift through her insubstantial form. By that time, she wouldn't show enough detail for anyone to enjoy her display; her modesty was in no danger.
        "I want to leave an account of myself," she said. "Call it memoirs or an autobiography. But this is something different. It's hard to explain. People write the story of their lives, and it's like a pale copy of themselves. All those memories, stories, lies--for their own enjoyment mostly. But with me..."
        I saw that her composure had been rattled. I was surprised; I had imagined that her serenity was permanent and indestructible.
        "This will have to stand instead of me," she said. "It will be all that's left. All the proof that anyone will have that I was ever here."
        "Well, if I can help..." I said, not really knowing what she was asking.
        "I've done a lot of it already," she said, as if I hadn't spoken. "I had diaries, letters and so on. But I've still got gaps. I want you to help me with a gap."
        "I see," I said. I glanced at my watch.
        "I want to talk to you about our relationship. What happened, why it ended. I just need to know before I'm gone."
        It would be easy to get out of. Just say yes, and not bother. Or say no on the spot and walk out; she'd be gone in a couple of weeks. I could put her off in that time. Or I suppose I could just make something up, get it over with.
        "Will you help me?" she asked.
        I decided to make another appointment with her, and not keep it.
        "Of course, I'll help," I said. And then, to my surprise, I realised that I meant it.

        Like a lot of people, I had a bit of a phobia of being near faders. Although it had been completely disproved, I felt as if it were contagious; or rather, as if Penelope's condition had been caused by subconscious mental habits, which might rub off on me. I felt a very strong sense of who I was; I felt solid, and I wanted to stay that way. So, my behaviour was worrying me. I was doing a favour for her. There was nothing in it for me, and it wasn't something I would normally do. I was acting out of character, and I believed that my character was the only thing that could save me.
        And yet, I still did it, and actually invited her to my flat. I reasoned that if she started stalking me, she couldn't keep it up for long.
        "The split was amicable," I reminded her. "And mutually agreed."
        "You amicably and mutually broke up with me," she replied.
        She puzzled me. The words were an argument, the words said that she had never got over our split and had returned out of spite or anger, determined to punish me in some way. But Penelope herself was saying something different. I could detect no bad feeling in her tone of voice, her posture, or her expression. She spoke as if she had long since accepted the outcome of our relationship, almost thought it was for the best. It made it very hard for me to counter her accusations.
        "Now be reasonable," I said. "I wasn't seeing anyone else. You remember our discussion as well as I do. There was just something missing between us."
        "You wanted to move on," she said.
        I looked at her more closely. It was possible that the clues I was looking for were less easy to find in her condition; perhaps the scowling lines on her face and the accusing fire in her eyes had faded faster than her physical features. But no, enough of her was still there (although I fancied there was less of her than when we had first met two days ago) for me to read her face. It was the serenity that came with fading, I guessed; her personality was no longer in tune with her words.
        I tried to focus, to go back to the reasons for our meeting. "You need this to be accurate," I said. "That's why you've come to me rather than rely on your own memory. You must try to remember."
        "I do remember," she said. "But I want to hear it from you. Tell me exactly what happened."
        "We were in bed," I said. "We'd just had sex." I looked at her, daring her to pretend that it hadn't been good. But then I looked away again. Her sex life was over now; no one could hold her again, not even me. Without thinking I reached for her arm; my hand seemed to sink into her flesh, as if it were a sponge. I expected to feel disgust, and perhaps I did; but I also felt reassured, that contact between the two of us could still take place. She wasn't so far gone as to be a ghost yet.
        She snatched her arm away. "Don't do that," she said sharply. I was pleased; I'd shocked her out of this pointless equanimity. "We don't like it."
        "We?" It hadn't occurred to me that she'd have been speaking to other faders. Then I couldn't work out why the information might matter.
        She ignored me. "You knew what you were going to say before we went to bed."
        "There was a discussion to be had. You knew that as well as I did. Why are you blaming me?"
        "I don't want to blame anyone. I just want to know why you acted as you did."
        I couldn't help remembering how her flesh had felt then. Soft and yielding, not like a rock; but compared to now, it had a solidity that I hadn't appreciated.
        "I'll tell you something, then," she said. "Back then. After we split up. I stayed in my room, and you left, and I knew then what was going to happen. I knew I'd just fade away."
        "That's ridiculous," I said. "That was years ago. Before the fading started."
        "But I still knew it. I felt as if it had started already."
        I remembered walking away, down the street, under the railway bridge, past the car park and towards freedom. I had felt exactly the opposite to her; I had felt as if I were solidifying. Why had we reacted in two different ways?
        "It's history now," I pointed out. "We couldn't get back together if we wanted to." I remembered the sponge-like feel of her flesh. Somebody must have tried it, I supposed, and I guessed that if I looked hard enough--probably not very hard--I'd find websites for fading fetishists, porn films in which one of the actresses was only half there. A thought suddenly struck me. "Is that why you're back?" I said. "The real reason. You're trying for one last fling." It didn't sound right, but I was hoping to provoke her.
        "Don't be so bloody stupid," she said, but there was no ire in her voice. "I told you why I'm here." There seemed to be an insect in the air between us, and I was about to brush it away when I realised it was the freckle on her face.
        "Then why are you so obsessed with this? It must have been a small part of your own life. Even if you're right, and I am the bastard you say I am, why does it matter? We were together for months, we've been apart for years. You must have had other boyfriends, must have got over it. Who cares if this small part of your life isn't written down accurately? Your readers won't know any better, and it doesn't matter."
        "My readers--there won't be any readers," she said.
        "Then why are you doing it?"
        "Because there won't be a corpse. Nobody looks at your body when you're dead and buried, but they need to know it's there. You don't get it, do you? I'm not trying to remember anything accurately." Suddenly there was bitterness in her voice again, and suddenly I liked her better again. She was feeling something. For a few seconds she was back. "I need you to remember me. I can't live on paper, I can't live in a body, so I need to live in your head."
        "I used to touch that freckle," I said, before my brain could kick the emergency cut-off switch to my mouth.
        "I remember that," she said. "I wondered if you did."
        I stared her, speechless, but too late for it to do me any good.
        "Try it again," she said.
        I couldn't move for a few seconds, knowing that whatever I did now would be wrong. Then I reached out my finger towards her cheek. I used to draw round it in a circle, teasing her, but a friendly tease. My finger sank below the outer level of her skin before meeting any resistance. The freckle must have been somewhere inside my finger, no longer visible.
        "I can't," I said. "It isn't there any more."
        How far in her face had I gone? If I touched her in the wrong place, would I find myself in her brain?
        I withdrew my finger.
        "Right," I said. "This is enough. We finished five years ago, and you've got about a month left on this earth. We can't even touch any more. I've spent those five years in a dead-end job and dead-end relationships, getting nowhere, never coming to anything. But I'm going to do something with my life, Penelope, I can promise you that. I'm going to be the one who worked it out. I'm going to be the one who fixed it."
        "Now what are you talking about?"
        "I'm going to bring you back."
        "You can't. It's never been done. Can you?"
        I'd got her. No more serenity. I'd woken her up. "Let's go," I said, stood up, and held out my hand.

        I wished I felt as confident as I was pretending. I knew this had never been done before, and I tried to remember what we actually knew about fading. There wasn't much.
        Firstly, it wasn't the Rapture. Some people claimed that this slow fading was what God had meant all along, rather than bodily lifting his chosen ones into Heaven; but if these were his chosen ones, he'd chosen them at random. Christians were no more or less likely to fade than anyone else. And by any objective standard, the same was true of any set of beliefs, or of behaviour. Saints and sinners faded according to their proportions in the population. I rather liked the idea of a God who had given up on morality and just rolled the dice, but it didn't sound realistic.
        Secondly, it wasn't physics. What was happening to Penelope was impossible. It wasn't merely an unexplained phenomenon; it was matter being destroyed. She wasn't becoming invisible, she was disappearing, and the atoms that made her body were simply losing existence. There had been enough experiments to show that she wasn't shedding them, leaving them lying on the ground or following her in a cloud; they had gone. The only possibility was that they were being converted into an unimaginable amount of energy. They weren't, and that meant that physics was bullshit. And that meant that reality was bullshit.
        Penelope, and the hundreds of thousands like her, were proving that the idea of reality, with its knowable and consistent rules of behaviour, was nonsense. Someone was making it up as they went along. And having ruled out God, it seemed to me that it must be a programmer. The idea that we're living in a computer simulation, that we're all artificial intelligences in an artificial reality, is an old one, but unprovable. Until some of the characters in the simulation began to disappear.
        So, at least in my opinion, we knew what was happening. What we didn't know was what to do about it. I'd heard rumours of people who had returned, who had solidified after they had begun to dissipate. I didn't believe them. There were also therapists of various schools who claimed to be able to slow the process. I didn't believe them either. The only scientists who had staked their reputations on these claims had little to stake.
        All we could do was try to avoid being taken ourselves, which was difficult as no one knew the criteria by which faders were selected. A lot of people believed that they had to make themselves as interesting as possible to the supposed programmers, by having outlandish lifestyles, as if they were all rock stars. It didn't seem to make a difference, and I thought it was just an excuse for a lot of sex and drugs. I found such people boring.
        I had my own idea, and it was the difference between Penelope and myself. I had always had a very strong sense of identity. I knew exactly who I was, what I wanted, and where I was going. Penelope was always a bit vague. She was too concerned with the welfare of other people to consider her own wants. She didn't have a strong enough personality. She was too timid, too much of a mug. I felt that we weren't being selected, exactly; rather, an algorithm was running to remove the bit parts and cameo roles, and keep the main characters. Anyone who was a bit fuzzy at the edges was paying the price.
        It was time to sharpen Penelope's edges.

        "Pizza," I said. "You loved pizza."
        "Still do," she said. I'd noticed that her hand in mine was as warm as a normal hand. I felt that this was a good sign. "From afar."
        "How do you eat?" I asked, wishing I'd learnt more about her condition. I didn't have long.
        "I don't get hungry," she said.
        "Get hungry," I said. "Look at what you're leaving behind. Just smell it." Oregano. I hated the smell actually, but for a single reason; it reminded me of her. "There'll be no pizza where you're going. What was your favourite topping?" I tried to remember. "Mushroom?"
        "I don't get this," she said, but she followed me in to sit down. "You're saying I'm doing this deliberately?"
        "No, accidentally," I said. "Subconsciously. You've really stopped eating? Of course you would, it would just be more mass to get rid of. Keep increasing your mass and you'll be harder to remove. Maybe they'll give up."
        "They?"
        "Use whichever pronoun you like, or put it in the passive voice. Just eat. Nothing but your favourite foods from now on; those preferences that always seemed to be part of yourself, your identity. I've remembered something else. Peach schnapps?"
        "Haven't drunk it for years."
        "Why not?" But I knew the answer. "The same reason I won't eat pizza. But those days are back. We're together again, eating pizza and drinking peach schnapps." And then I lost it. "For fuck's sake Penelope, don't you want to come back?"
        To my surprise, she actually thought about it. Then finally, in a voice so quiet that I wondered if it were too late and she were nearly gone, she said, "yes."
        I ordered her a twelve-inch thick-crust pizza funghi, and watched her devour every last crumb. So much for not getting hungry. In truth I'd brought her here out of desperation, but now I was certain. I watched her face again, looking at the freckle, wondering when, or rather if, it would return to a face that was completely opaque.
        "Stop looking at me like that," she said. "Or did you think I'd solidify on the spot?"
        "I don't know how it will work," I admitted. "But you've eaten it all."
        "So, have you," she said. "You'll be increasing your own mass if you're not careful."
        I took offence at that, but tried to hide it. Again, this was the old Penelope, not the unfeeling, fading version.
        I settled the bill and called her a taxi. As I watched the car carry her away, I felt a strange emptiness inside myself. I knew what it was, and I finally let my smile fade as I walked away.
        I felt like two people sometimes. Of course I valued my independence. If I'd ignored my real feelings, sacrificed myself and stayed with her, I would have made her life hell. We would have turned into one of those couples that argues all the time because they have no other way of communicating. And yes, it would have been my fault, completely. But I could never have stopped it.
        Equally, I knew what I'd lost. For an hour or so, the last five years hadn't passed. We were together, laughing, eating, the same tastes bringing up the same memories, and the time for me to leave hadn't happened yet. I was as happy back then as she'd been, and briefly I'd felt that I could have it back.
        As I walked home, I wondered if this were true. My own feelings had surprised me. I knew that I would probably lose her forever. But I knew also that I wanted to keep her.

        After that I devoted myself to Penelope in a way that I would never have done when we were together.
        I took her on a trip to the beach, a repeat of a visit we'd made five years ago. We'd gone by train back then, so we did so now; at least this way I could have a drink. Once we arrived I thought of putting my arm around her, but I didn't want to get that sponge-like feel again. Instead I walked beside her, trying to think myself back to the first time around, when we'd come here as lovers. Just a trip to the nearest beach for a picnic; not a special place, but every place became special when we walked through it. We must have been nauseating.
        "I remember that pub," she said, so we went in. "The walls were a different colour," she said. "They used to be a pale blue. It reminded me of a bathroom."
        "The bar used to be at the far end of the room," I said. "It seems to be longer now." I had a beer in front of me, and it wasn't very nice. But that was what I'd been drinking five years ago. Penelope was fidgeting with a glass of peach schnapps. I could smell it from my place on the other side of the table, pulling me back in time.
        "I wonder if they're still around," she said, frowning.
        "Who?"
        "People like me. Where I'm going. When they fade, do they die? Or do they just flit around, bodiless, watching what goes on, remembering or forgetting, maybe meeting each other?"
        "You shouldn't be thinking of that," I said. "That's what I'm trying to get you away from."
        "I think they stay, though," she said. "I can't prove it, but I'm allowed intuition on the subject, aren't I? I don't think we go away."
        I'd wondered this myself. In some ways it was an attractive prospect, particularly if you were fading yourself. I'd assumed that Penelope was dying. It would be nice to think that she'd live on, even if disembodied.
        "I wonder if that coffee shop's still there," I said, clumsily trying to change the subject.
        "Please," she said. "This is important to me."
        I was about to lose my patience when another half of me, perhaps the wiser half, gained control. I decided to listen.
        "I'm not scared of dying," she said. "I was going to do that anyway. But I don't want to be alone. I want there to be others."
        I said nothing for a few moments. Abruptly she drained her glass.
        "Let's go," she said. "I want to see the sea again."

        The seafront hadn't changed. Penelope held my hand and I let her, imagining that she was as real as I was. We walked in the sand, away from the town and away from the holidaymakers. She was barefoot, but I didn't know if this was through choice, or because she could no longer wear shoes. Her footprints were shallow and vague.
        "We walked this way when we came five years ago," she said.
        "I remember," I said. I knew where this was going now, and said nothing. She seemed happy, and I realised that I was cheerful myself. For some reason I felt free of any pressure to bring her back, and only needed to appreciate her for being here.
        It was twenty minutes before we found the cave. I call it a cave now because that's what we called it then; really it was a hollow in the rock, with an outcrop overhead to give some kind of shelter. There was an empty plastic cider bottle lying inside. I kicked it out of the way and she followed me in.
        "Some things don't change," she said, running her hand along the rough wall. It looked dark and slimy, but I was transported back in time by the strong seaside smell--probably little more than rotting fish and seaweed, but it seemed to speak to me of every childhood and adult holiday I'd ever had, culminating with my day-trip with Penelope.
        I was relieved that people can't be bothered to walk nowadays. This was still a nice stretch of beach, but the holidaymakers clustered around the entrance from the road, too lazy to explore.
        She sat down on the sand. I hadn't checked the tides; the water was still some distance, intruding only with its soft rushing, a pleasant and relaxing noise.
        I looked down at Penelope, hoping for a signal. She looked back, waiting to see what I was going to do.
        I gently moved my hand towards her face, touching her freckle with my finger. Her flesh yielded beneath my touch, but resisted, until I could feel myself pressing onto bone. The freckle remained beneath my finger.
        I withdrew, wondering, and Penelope kissed the end of my finger. I pushed back and she opened her mouth, gently pressing me with her teeth and caressing me with her tongue.
        I crouched down next to her, and kissed her. Her mouth and her tongue both gave as good as they were given.
        I looked in her eyes. "Last time that kid was watching us," I said. "I hope that doesn't happen again."
        "You didn't tell me until after, you bastard," she said, and kissed me again. I ran my hand inside her blouse and felt her breasts, soft but no softer than five years ago.
        "Come on," she said, and we lay together on the ground, uncomfortable but not noticing, and each proving that the other was solid.

        I fell asleep in her arms. I awoke with a start, suddenly worried that the tide was in and that we had no way of escape, but I quickly saw that we were safe and closed my eyes again, just enjoying our togetherness.
        I felt no pride in what I had done. I had originally seen her as a problem to be solved; now I just wanted her back. We couldn't turn back the five years, pretend that nothing had changed, of course not; but we could carry on, in the present, with new experiences. Maybe I could have stayed with her five years ago, maybe I couldn't, but now I was ready.
        "That was lovely," she said.
        "Yes," I said, holding her closer.
        Then I sat up in horror.
        "I'm going," she said.
        "No!" I said, scrabbling at her but finding nothing to hold. "It worked! You were back!"
        "It worked," she agreed. "You worked wonders, you."
        "Pizzas!" I shouted. "Think of everything we've had, what we've just done! Didn't it mean anything?"
        "It meant the world to me," she said dreamily. Her freckle was invisible against the ground, her face transparent beneath it.
        "Don't leave me!"
        "I won't," she said. "You've been a miracle, but you couldn't stop this happening. Don't worry; you've done everything I wanted."
        "What?" I remembered what I'd thought when she'd first come back, and wondered if this had all been some kind of trick after all.
        "I don't want to be alone," she said. "When I've gone. And I don't want you to be alone either. You never realised that, did you? That you were always alone. You were so sure of yourself, so solid, but you were always alone, and you didn't want to be, and you didn't realise."
        "Then don't leave me alone now!"
        "I won't," she said. "I'll never leave you. I promise you that. Listen. This will come to you as well. You know that, don't you? You've always known."
        I tried to deny it, but all I could do was nod. The knowledge had always been within me, hidden beneath my theories and plans. I didn't know why I had been selected. Perhaps it was random after all; or perhaps I simply wasn't the person I thought I was. I watched my tears darken the sand.
        "When it does, and you've faded, you won't be alone. I'll be there for you. You have to realise that. That's why I came back. Not for me, but for you. So you know you won't have to be alone."
        "Don't go," I said softly. I put my hands in front of my eyes. They were solid. They blocked out all the light. And yet I already fancied that I could see through them, that on the other side of my flesh I could dimly make out Penelope's figure. But when I took them away, she had gone.

        I stayed in the cave for nearly an hour, not sure if I was thinking of the past or the future, or staying for my sake or Penelope's. But I knew that I had to stand up, get myself to the station, find something to eat, go home, and move my life on.
        The journey home was hellish. There were crying children who seemed to have little to cry about, and I sat next to a large man with bad breath and body odour. I was trying not to think of the last time I'd taken this trip, when we'd sat together, touching each other under the table, sharing the secret of what we'd done.
        When I got off the train I went for a burger. I took it home and sat in the kitchen of my flat, wanting to feel as if I couldn't eat but in fact being so hungry that I scarfed it in no time.
        I put the television on. After a few minutes I put it off; it was just annoying. I tried to read but couldn't concentrate.
        I sat for a few minutes in silence, alone. I thought back to what Penelope had said.
        "Thank you," I said to her.
        Then I opened my laptop and began to write my autobiography.