“Uh...are you okay?” she asked me.
My eyes suddenly widened. I remembered that the rest of the world didn’t know what I knew—I had to continue playing my part. “Sorry. Um, thank you, no. Not tonight. A London Fog. That’s what I’d like. Large, please.”
She nodded and smiled, though her eyes told me she’d instantly formed the opinion that I either had a mental illness or was having a difficult time coming off prescription medication.
I paid for my drink and watched her walk to the drink station to begin making my London Fog. I thought of all the interactions I’d had with her over the last few years. Had there been anything odd about them, I wondered? Had they always been simply routine? Was she an automaton? Was she just a simple construct, placed into Kali’s virtual dream to serve me drinks twice a week? Or was there more to her? Was she conscious like I was? Was she truly human? Was anyone? Am I? “Cogito, ergo sum,” I whispered to myself.
“Pardon me?” the young woman said as she handed me my drink.
“Oh, uh...it’s Latin. It means, ‘I think, therefore I am.’”
Her eyes narrowed. “Right. Makes sense.” She shrugged and smiled. “Me too, I guess.”
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said, holding up my drink and turning away from her, returning back to my daze and walking in my trance to an open table, sitting and staring forward with my warm drink in hand.
“Hey, Professor,” said another young woman, this one with purple, spiky hair and more piercings on her lips, eyebrows, nose, and ears than I’d ever seen on a person in the flesh. “You need to keep up appearances. You’re starting to freak people out.”
“I-I’m sorry. Do I know you?” I asked as she sat down across from me, a mischievous, knowing smile painted across her black lip-sticked lips.
“I know you. That’s what’s important.”
For the second time that night, my mouth hung open. “Wh-what?”
“I also know what happened to you tonight,” she continued. She reached across the table and took the London Fog from my slack grip and put the cup to her lips. “Mmm. Yummy.”
“Help yourself,” I whispered in shock.
“You found out something tonight that messed with you pretty good, didn’t you?” she said, pointing to her forehead and making a circular motion with her index finger in a clear reference to my current state of mind.
I stayed quiet, paralyzed with fear.
The girl with the purple hair leaned forward, grinning, the whites of her eyes brilliant against the black outline of her heavy eyeliner. “You’re living inside someone else’s head, Professor,” she whispered eerily.
I couldn’t breathe.
“And,” she said, leaning back into her seat and propping her brown leather boots on my knee, “I bet you’re just dying to get some answers.”
7
“Who are you?” I whispered, my throat dry.
“The name’s Haywire.” She leaned forward and extended her hand to shake mine. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” I barely managed to say. I had no idea what the hell was going on, nor did I know who or what that woman was. I swiveled my head, scanning for exits.
Haywire laughed. “You’re worried that I’m one of Kali’s creations, aren’t you?”
My eyes locked back on hers instantly; she seemed to know everything. It didn’t make sense. How could she possibly know? I asked myself. The only explanation was that she was some sort of manifestation of Kali’s imagination. I’d left Kali dreaming upstairs in our bedroom. Was it possible that I was caught in a dream within a dream?
“I’m not a spy. Don’t worry,” Haywire stated, her lips forming a sideways smirk. “However, I can’t be completely sure that you’re not, unwittingly spying on me for her.” She reached into her small, black purse and pulled out her phone. “So I hope you don’t mind if I check. Hold still.” Then she held it out in front of me, waving it over me as though she were airport security and this was her wand. The phone made a happy whistle and she smiled. “All clean. Awesome,” she said as she placed her phone back into her bag. “You’ll be happy to know that she hasn’t bugged you.”
“Bugged me?”
“Yeah, you know...with spyware.” She leaned in again and whispered, “Anyone you meet could be a spy. She can see through their eyes.”
I turned my head slightly and noted that the dark eyed girl behind the counter was watching us out of the corner of her eye. As soon as our eyes made contact, mine jumped back to Haywire, whose sideways smirk returned.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Scanned her when I came in.”
“With your phone?” I asked. “What kind of technology is—”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” She held up my London Fog and waved it over me in the same fashion as she had her phone. “Beep, beep, beep,” she said, each word aggravatingly high-pitched. “Ding! You’re cleared again! Congratulations!” She took another sip of what was formerly my drink. “I can use any physical object to scan you in this simulation. The phone or the cup—they just represent the scan, just like this body you see me in just represents me—but it’s not me. You dig? I’m just wearing it, like a skin suit.”
The plot, as they say, was thickening quickly.
“It’s...it’s an avatar?”
“Bingo,” she said, her eyes smiling at me over the lip of the stolen cup as she continued to drink.
“So...so you’re not—”
“From around here? Nope. I’m from the real world, handsome.”
Strange as it may sound, what stunned me most wasn’t the fact that the woman had just told me she was from the real world; it was that she’d used the word “handsome” to describe me, which no one had ever done before. That my hand bolted up to touch my own cheek gave me away; I could see it in her eyes. She was flirting. Absurdly, she grinned and batted her eyes.
“The real world? You mean, you’re from Kali’s world? You’re like her?”
“In the sense that I’m from her time and exist outside of this simulation, yes, I’m like her,” she said, quickly adding in a slow, emphatic tone, “but I’m not like her in any other sense. We’re worlds apart.”
“What do you mean?”
“For one thing, I don’t create conscious beings with my imagination to amuse myself, only to murder them when I lose interest.”
“Murder?” I repeated flatly, unable to blink.
“That’s right,” Haywire began. “Murder. As in mass murder. Holocaust.”
“Then she can really do it,” I replied, my hands now shaking. “She can actually turn off the world.”
“Right again, Professor.”
“And I’m not the only one, am I? The other people in the simulation are conscious too?”
“Not all of them,” Haywire replied, “but a lot of them are—tens of thousands of them, in fact. But don’t worry,” she said, the smile suddenly vanished from her face as she stood to her feet and slapped her hand against my shoulder. “If you help us, we’ll save the people in this sim, and we’ll get you out of here too. We can get you into the real world, safe and sound.”
“Us? There are more of you?”
“Come on, Professor. Some people are waiting to meet you.”
8
As we neared my car, it quickly became apparent that there were two men already sitting in the back seat. My heart jumped. “How did they get past the car’s security system?”
Haywire narrowed her eyes, as though she were fascinated by my ignorance. “You’re kidding, right? We’re virtually gods in this world. Your little car alarm wasn’t a match.”
The door swung open.
“Hello, Professor,” the car said.
I didn’t reply as the front seats swiveled to face those in the back. Haywire and I stepped in and deposited ourselves efficiently into place, facing the back of the car and the two men who sat silently.
As soon as the car door closed, we began to move.
“Where ar
e we going?” I asked, concerned, as I was transported into the black night toward an unknown destination.
“Just for a little drive, handsome,” Haywire replied, smiling as she tucked her arm in mine and brushed her shoulder against me.
“That’s the second time you’ve—”
“I’ve called you handsome?” she said, finishing my thought. “Yeah, well, I find it makes it easier for me to risk my life to save you if I choose to see you as a pleasing avatar. In your case, I picked Brad Pitt from when he did that movie, Troy,” she reported almost gleefully. “I’m enjoying my choice,” she said as she squeezed my bicep.
I turned to the two men, embarrassed.
The shorter of the two offered with nary a facial expression, “I just see you the way everyone else in this sim sees you—plain.”
“Ditto,” said the larger, more muscular man.
“They’re no fun,” Haywire informed me. “Especially him,” she said, pointing to the shorter man.
“I’m Mr. Big,” the larger man interjected, reaching across the cabin to shake my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Professor.”
“Likewise...Mr. Big,” I replied. “It suits you.”
“It’s my avatar name,” Mr. Big replied, his mouth opening into a wide grin, his teeth remarkably straight and gleaming white. “In the real world, I’m...well, slight in stature. Here, I figured I would try out what it feels like to be six-six.”
“And black,” Haywire added, her sideways smirk returning.
“Oh, you’re not black in the real world?” I asked, stunned by the odd revelation.
“No,” Mr. Big replied, bowing his head, suddenly bashful.
“Race is irrelevant in our time,” the shorter man suddenly interjected. “However, the choice to be six-six when we’re trying to be inconspicuous was extraordinarily regrettable.”
“And that’s Mr. No Fun,” Haywire announced.
“Droll, dear. Droll,” he replied. “Actually,” he began, leaning forward to shake my hand in greeting, “my name is John Doe.”
“Like I said, Mr. No Fun,” Haywire repeated.
“We’re not here to have fun,” John Doe replied, the slight hint of a smile that had accompanied our handshake now wiped away. “We’re here to save people’s lives. Drawing attention to ourselves with purple hair and a professional basketball player’s physique is reckless.”
“Why are you introducing yourselves to me by your avatar names?” I asked.
“For our protection,” John replied. “We still live in the real world, and there are certain entities that would kill us if they discovered our true identities.”
“As long as you don’t know our names—” Mr. Big continued before I cut him off, realizing the implication.
“Then I can’t give your true identities away...even under torture.”
Haywire squeezed my arm again. “Hey, it’s just a precaution. Nobody’s gonna torture you.”
I was by no means reassured.
“If I don’t get to know your real names, can I at least be informed as to what is going on?”
“Certainly,” John said as he sat back and sighed. The city lights danced past us as we continued to drive into the damp night. “We’re what are called post-humans.”
“Post-humans?” I asked with an arched eyebrow. I was familiar with the term, but I was surprised the people of the future had decided to adopt it.
“Yes,” John answered. “We’re human—only enhanced.”
“Human-plus,” Haywire elaborated with a prideful grin.
“We’re like Kali,” John resumed, “but we differ from her substantially philosophically.”
“That’s what I told him,” Haywire reported as she squeezed my bicep once again; I suddenly found myself wishing I could look down at my arm and see the impressive arm that she was hallucinating and that had enamored her so.
“You see,” John continued, “in our time, our intelligence has become so advanced that we’re as much higher than even you, Professor, just as you are above a chimp that can do some limited sign language.”
My eyes widened, and I felt my head unintentionally jolt back. I was stunned to have my intelligence denigrated to such an extent. I was used to being told daily that I was one of the world’s foremost geniuses, and I had strong reason to suspect that I was actually the smartest human on Earth. If what John Doe was saying was true, then Kali and the three post-humans before me were far more capable—intellectually and otherwise—than I could possibly imagine.
“That’s not a very flattering way of putting it for him,” Mr. Big noted.
“It’s the truth,” John replied. “He needs to hear it so he can understand.” John turned back to me. “With that level of cognitive ability, aided by the nearly limitless processing power of computers in our time and our ability to mentally link to vast and intricate programs, we’re able to create our own sims—our own virtual worlds—in whichever way we choose.”
“The problem is,” Mr. Big jumped in, “not all post-humans agree about the ethics of sim-building, and autonomy is such in our future that there is no governing security force or laws in place to prevent abuse of virtual entities.”
“Virtual entities?” I said, nearly breathless. “You mean consciousnesses created in the sims? Conscious beings like me?”
“That’s right,” John answered. “Most who have decided to spend their time in these sims—to become virtual gods in the playgrounds of their own creation—consider the conscious programs they create to be so below them that they don’t respect their right to exist. Like the humans in your time who feel it is perfectly acceptable to squash a spider without a second thought, these post-humans feel it is their right to create a conscious entity in a sim whenever they choose...and then to destroy it just as carelessly.”
“By turning off the sim?” I ventured.
John nodded. “Yes.”
“Or worse,” Haywire added.
“Worse?” I reacted, my head snapping around to look at her, aghast. What could be worse than death? I thought. I tried to fathom. What could be worse than not existing?
“The post-humans who create these worlds have no respect,” Haywire elaborated, “especially in the closing hours of a sim. They do as they please. They create havoc.” She shook her head as if to shake away painful past images that had been conjured by our current topic of conversation.
I looked away from her and back to John Doe for confirmation. He nodded.
“Trust me, you don’t want to see what we’ve seen. When a sim is collapsing...well, nothing in the worst nightmares of Dante or Blake could do it justice. It’s Hell. True Hell. And we have reason to believe that this sim is entering its final hours.”
9
“What do you mean?” I asked, my body petrified. “How can you know if the world is collapsing?”
“It was that little stunt with the sky earlier this evening,” Haywire answered. “Pretty unusual for overcast skies to vanish in a matter of seconds, then return a few seconds later. It’s all the news talked about all night. It made national headlines.”
I hadn’t checked the news, so I brought up a report immediately in my aug glasses. A headline appeared, reading: “Bizarre Weather Event Stuns City.”
“To do something so reckless,” John began, “is a clear indication that Kali is no longer interested in keeping this sim intact.”
“It’s a classic sign,” Haywire added. “It’ll only get worse from here. We call it ‘breaking the fourth wall,’ and we’re sure to see plenty more of it from her.”
“We must set as many people free as possible before the sim collapses completely,” John concluded.
The climate control in the car was functioning perfectly, yet I was chilled almost to the point of shivering. My car took us across the bridge, through the causeway, farther and farther into the heart of darkness. “Where are you taking me?” I asked, barely able to keep myself together.
“To a dead spot,”
Haywire replied. “We want to show you something.”
“A dead spot?” I asked, not at all enthused by the foreboding terminology.
My car’s roof became transparent, though I’d spoken no command to activate the feature. Clearly, the three post-humans could control certain elements of technology with their minds—or at least they’d figured out a way to make it seem that way. John Doe pointed up to the darkened high-rises that surrounded us as we drove through the harbor front’s luxury real estate. “Why are all these buildings empty?” he asked me. “Why are there no lights burning in any of the windows? Surely someone is awake, even at this hour?”
“Nobody lives in these buildings,” I replied. “This city has the most expensive real estate in the world. All of these units are owned by Chinese businesspeople who hold them for investment reasons.”
“Hmm,” John reacted, his lips slightly pursed, indicating that he was impressed that I had an answer ready. “It sounds like you are personally familiar with the real estate market on the harbor front?”
“Kali and I explored buying a penthouse here. Even with my considerable fortune and pull, we were unable to pry anything loose from foreign investors.”
“Do you feel confident in your answer?”
It was clear that John Doe was toying with me. I didn’t like being toyed with. “Clearly, you don’t think my answer is right.”
“I don’t think you’re not right. I know you’re not right. Would you like to know where you’ve made your error in reasoning?”
My lips pulled back into a slight grimace, despite my best efforts to contain it. It wasn’t my intention to be rude, but I wasn’t used to being treated like a pupil—like a child. “Sure,” I replied flatly.
“Surely renting is not illegal.”
“I suppose not.”
“Yet these unnamed foreign investors, who are so concentrated on accruing monetary wealth that they, every single one of them, will not relinquish even one penthouse on the harbor, are somehow content with leaving their properties empty, when they could be renting them to maximize the profitability of their investments?”
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