Come and Find Me

by Hallie Ephron

  Chapter Ten

  Sunday morning Ashley still didn’t come by to get her computer. She hadn’t called either, which wasn’t unusual but was still annoying as hell. She’d probably met someone and gotten involved in her own drama. Diana called and left a message. She sent her an e-mail which generated an automated out-of-the-office reply.

  Diana tried to keep busy. She did some more research for PWNED on chelation scams. Worked on the proposal for a hot new client, Vault Security, who Jake was convinced would launch them to an entirely new level. Jake talked about their business like it was some kind of computer game, and they were advancing to the castle where they’d free the princess. The thought brought Diana back to Ashley. Where the hell was she and why wasn’t she returning Diana’s messages?

  The possibility that something had happened to her was too terrifying to contemplate. Ashley had been her rock. She’d been there at the airport to meet Diana and Jake’s flight back from Switzerland. She’d stayed for a week in the isolated farmhouse while Diana sleepwalked through the motions of everyday life. When Ashley finally left, Diana had climbed into the four-poster bed she’d shared with Daniel and buried herself in a mound of his T-shirts and flannel and fleece tops, his pajama bottoms, all clothing that she’d dug out of the laundry bin. Burrowed her head under the pillow and slept.

  She’d lost track of time, one day blending into the next. Ignoring the phone, rising only to go to the bathroom or nuke one of the frozen dinners Ashley had stocked in her fridge. Whenever she’d been jerked awake by another falling-off-the-mountain nightmare, she willed herself back to unconsciousness by envisioning the soft lap of a forest where she could lie half buried in pine needles, sensing Daniel’s breathing, pulsing presence all around her.

  Day after day had turned into week after week. Then Diana had felt a touch on her shoulder. She’d tried to burrow deeper, barricade herself.

  “Diana?” Ashley’s voice tugged at her.

  “Leave me alone, please, just go away.” The words were only in her head; even the will to speak had fled.

  A cool hand snaked under the mound of clothes and found her. She tried to break free, but she was held in a firm grip.

  “Come on. Time to come out.”

  Diana tried to hold on to the pillow, then to the covers, but Ashley pulled them off. As cool air claimed her, Diana blinked and winced away the bright morning sun that slanted in through the window.

  “Sweetie, you can’t keep on like this.” Ashley was crouched beside the bed, her face inches from Diana’s. Beyond her, Diana could see Jake hovering in the open doorway.

  “See this?” Ashley held the newspaper in front of her. Its white background was blinding. “It’s the middle of February. Twenty-five degrees out. The sun is shining. In a month the snow bells will be blooming, for goodness’ sake. It’s time to get up. Get out. It’s been too long for you to still be like this.”

  Ashley and Jake had hauled Diana out of bed, wrenching her from the nest she’d built. Diana tried to climb back in but Jake scooped up the clothing and ripped away the bedding, leaving only a bare mattress.

  “There’s nothing for you there,” Ashley said.

  Diana backed up and tripped over Daniel’s driftwood walking stick. She bent over and picked it up. It was solid and surprisingly light in her hand, and she cried out as her head seemed to fill with Daniel’s presence.

  The front door opened and closed. A few moments later, an older woman, a stranger with a soft, sympathetic face, stood in the bedroom doorway.

  “Thanks for coming,” Ashley said to her.

  Later, after a long shower, Diana had sat at her kitchen table. A pot of beef stew burbled on the stove. Ashley sat on one side of her. Dr. Lightfoot, who would become her therapist, sat on the other side.

  “I know,” Dr. Lightfoot had said, warmth in her kind eyes, “you needed to bury him . . .”

  Diana felt her insides wrench. “. . . and I couldn’t. I can’t . . .” She tried and failed to hold back a sob.

  “It’s hard. I know, it doesn’t seem fair,” Dr. Lightfoot said. She touched the back of Diana’s hand.

  “Maybe he survived,” Diana said. “Because I still feel him. It feels just like he’s still here.”

  “Diana,” Dr. Lightfoot said, “accepting death and letting go is the first step. Until you do that, you won’t be able to move on.”

  Following Dr. Lightfoot’s good advice, over the months that followed Diana had tried to move on physically, even though the emotional journey would turn out to take much longer. She got rid of Daniel’s clothing and gave away his books. She moved out of the farmhouse and back into the house where she’d grown up. Still, her heart refused to accept that Daniel was gone. Every time she touched Daniel’s walking stick, it seemed to bring him back to her.

  “That stick does not smell,” Ashley had said. “And it’s not even pine.”

  “It’s not a literal smell,” Diana had tried to explain. To say it was Daniel’s essence sounded crazy. “It’s more of a feeling. It’s Daniel.”

  “It’s you,” Ashley had said. “And maybe his ghost in your own head. Your phantom limb.”

  That spring, around the time when Ashley had correctly predicted that the snow bells would be blooming in Diana’s backyard, hikers near the spot where Daniel disappeared found remains, picked over by scavengers, and an orange ski jacket. Jake traveled to Switzerland to bring Daniel back, but all he’d returned with were his ashes in a brass urn. When Diana had held it in her hands, she felt absolutely nothing.

  “See?” Ashley had said. “He’s really and truly gone.”

  It was at that point that she’d surrendered.

  In Switzerland, Jake had obtained documents that enabled Daniel to be declared legally dead. He’d convinced Diana to invest the life insurance settlement—all of the one million dollars—in the business that they’d been planning to start when they returned from Switzerland. She knew that helping her was Jake’s way of dealing with the guilt he felt about Daniel—after all, Jake had been the one anchoring the rope.

  The ding on her computer brought Diana back to the present. A chat window had opened.

  GROB: U there?

  This time, the interruption was welcome. A moment later he added:

  GROB: I want to show you something. Meet me? 1329, 4655.

  She stared at the coordinates, as if between the numbers or within the pattern she’d glean meaning. Was it safe? She’d learned the hard way about transporting to untested coordinates. Parts of OtherWorld were infested with willfully antisocial players who got pleasure from annoying everyone else. She’d once arrived at what she thought was a business meeting with a new client and found herself trapped in a combat sim. A cylindrical cage had dropped over her avatar. An avatar troll had appeared, knocked the cage over, and started rolling it down a hill and into a lake with Nadia trapped inside.

  Diana had known it wasn’t real, just “cartoon characters,” as Ashley put it, but she’d been thoroughly freaked. Her heart had flipped into high gear and she couldn’t catch her breath as Nadia’s health meter plummeted and her body grew increasingly transparent.

  It was an experience Diana had no desire to repeat, even though after “death” Nadia had simply transported home, where her “life” resumed as if it had never been terminated.

  GROB: Come on. I won’t bite.

  She could hear Ashley’s words: Sweetie, don’t you think it’s time you let someone in? Diana copied the new coordinates into OtherWorld’s atlas. No, the area was not damage enabled. No complaints had been logged. She clicked and brought up a map showing the area surrounding those coordinates. A single yellow dot indicated that an avatar was already there. Just one. GROB was waiting for her.

  Diana slipped on her headphones and transported Nadia. A bell sounded, and sand-colored dunes materialized around her. She touche
d an arrow key and Nadia started to walk up the gentle slope toward the other avatar, her legs sinking knee-deep into virtual sand with each step.

  GROB was facing away from her. He wore a light gray cowboy hat, jeans, and black high-tops with white soles. His dark wavy hair came down to his shoulders. As she came up behind him, she could see the view he was taking in. Waves breaking and water extending to the horizon.

  He turned, raised an arm, and waved. Beneath the brim of his Stetson, his mirrored sunglasses reflected back Nadia’s image. That must have been a bear to program. He was handsome as hell, square-jawed and muscular. Diana wondered if this avatar bore even a passing resemblance to the person behind it.

  Diana typed wave/ and Nadia raised her arm.

  A voice balloon appeared over GROB’s head. “You came.” The voice that came through her earpiece sounded synthesized.

  Diana angled the view, taking in the deserted beach dotted with coconut palms. “Wow. Where are we?”

  “Ever been to Hawaii?”

  “Never.”

  “We’re on the Big Island. And over there?” GROB turned and pointed.

  Diana angled the view 180 degrees. Behind them was the outline of a mountain range, not jagged like the Alps but gently rising and soft, as if its peaks had been sketched with pastel chalk.

  “That big one?” GROB said. “That’s Mauna Kea. Its name means ‘white mountain.’ It’s got permafrost and snow all year-round. Just an hour-and-a-half drive from this beach. But we can get there much faster. Take my hand.”

  GROB held out his hand to Nadia. Diana’s hand spasmed into a fist. He wanted her to link Nadia to him. That gave him control over where they went.

  Nadia is not me, Diana reminded herself. Avatars were impervious. They couldn’t get mangled by outside forces. All she had to do was shut down OtherWorld if things got hairy, and when she brought it up again Nadia would be home again, no worse for the wear.

  Diana forced her hand open and typed in the command link/. Nadia’s hand grasped GROB’s. When he rose up into the air, she flew beside him, soaring out over the ocean and then back over the beach and on toward the mountain range.

  Diana felt breathless. She made Nadia point to a pair of nearby peaks, one twice the size of its neighbor, each with gently sloping cone-shaped sides and a dimpled depression at the tip. She loved mountains, and here were peaks as distinctive and yet so different from the imperious majesty of the Eiger or the Grand Tetons. She felt stirring in her an urge she’d nearly forgotten—she wanted to go there.

  “Cinder cones,” GROB said. “Wouldn’t it be cool to walk out to the rim of that big one on a moonless night, to stay there until sunrise watching the stars? Too bad you can’t do it. Native Hawaiians consider the place sacred.”

  They flew back to the beach and their two avatars walked hand in hand, side by side along the water’s edge, their virtual feet leaving behind a trail of prints that washed away as each new wave lapped the shore. Diana told him about some of the places she’d hiked. Death Valley, in December, one of the most spectacular and spiritual spots in the universe. New Hampshire’s White Mountains in May—that had been three years ago—when a snowstorm nearly buried their tent in snow. But icefall climbing, she told him, was the most magical of all.

  Surfing was more his thing, he said. That and nature. He told her about camping at a remote nature preserve in Costa Rica accessible only by boat. There, where the jungle ended at a white sand beach, the howling of monkeys and a symphony of birds woke him each morning.

  They talked on and on. She told him about her sister “Susannah,” a name she invented on the spot for Ashley. It felt good to admit, out loud, how worried she was. Ashley’s absence was gnawing at her.

  GROB told her about his brother, Tom, a recovered alcoholic who couldn’t hold a job. GROB was the only anchor in his brother’s chaotic life.

  “I’m sorry. That must be hard for you,” Diana said. “My sister’s annoying. But truly, she’s totally there for me. Except when there’s a man in the picture or when she’s convinced that she’s deathly ill.”

  GROB laughed. “Hypochondriac?”

  “And then some. We couldn’t be more different. Her favorite color was pink; mine was red.” Diana told him about the pictures in their family photo album from a typical Halloween—her blond sister posing in a leotard, pink tutu, and feather boa; dark-haired Diana, two years older and all knees and elbows, wearing a red cape she’d made out of one of their mother’s old cocktail dresses, red tights, a leotard, construction-paper horns on her head, and a garden pitchfork clasped in her hand.

  “Believe it or not, when I was little I was fearless,” she said. “I jumped off our garage roof one time on a dare. Sprained my ankle. A month later I did it again, this time without a scratch. Then I started charging kids in the neighborhood to watch. Earned enough to buy myself a Game Boy. Ash . . . uh, Susannah stood sentry and whistled if my mother was on her way out to investigate.”

  “Sounds like you two were quite a pair.”

  “Oil and water.”

  “Siblings,” he said. “Definition: two people who run in opposite directions and end up crashing into each other.”

  Diana laughed. GROB sat on the beach. Nadia sat beside him. She unlinked Nadia’s hand from GROB’s, and the two avatars just sat there in a long silence that neither of them rushed to fill.

  Finally, Diana said, “Thanks for telling me about yourself. And for sharing this special place.”

  “Special,” he said, “and sad.”

  “Sad?”

  “Yes . . . no.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Maybe one day. But not here. If we ever meet . . . in the real world. I hope we do.”

  Diana stared out at the virtual ocean, wondering if she’d ever sit on the sand on a real beach and gaze out at the horizon separating sea from sky. In the real world, waves were irregular and unpredictable, not like these waves that unfurled as regularly as wallpaper patterns. Predictability. That was this virtual world’s greatest strength and greatest weakness.

  Suddenly little eddies seemed to be forming in the sand in front of them. The swirling patterns grew, and grew, until the entire beach heaved and boiled.

  “Oh, shit,” said GROB.

  Instinctively Diana grabbed her chair arms and pushed back. A downward whirling vortex grew in the sand, and up from its depths shot an avatar clad head to toe in gleaming battle armor.

  “This is what you wanted to show me?” Diana managed to say.

  “Hell, no!” In an instant, GROB was standing over Nadia, planted between her and the armored avatar that hovered over them. It raised its arm and an avalanche of blue phalluses fell from the sky and seemed to bounce off a barrier, like an invisible bubble surrounding her and GROB.

  Flying phalluses. Soon there’d be tumbling toasters. It was completely ridiculous—Diana realized that. But still she felt assaulted, and when she tried to move Nadia and found she couldn’t, she started to panic. She smashed down on the mouse, clicking over and over as she grew short of breath. She should never have come here.

  “Take it easy,” GROB said. “They can’t hurt you,”

  It took three tries before Diana typed /home correctly into the transporter, but Nadia simply disappeared and reappeared right where she was. She typed in random coordinates. Once again, Nadia faded and came back. Diana clicked all over the screen, trying in vain to get a menu to come up so she could get out of there.

  Two more armored avatars circled overhead

  “Assholes!” GROB said. “I hate this. Jesus, don’t these people have anything better to do?”

  More blue phalluses rained down around them, bouncing off the invisible barrier that she assumed GROB had created. Diana reared back each time one of the freakish objects splashed into the water or crashed into the s
and and exploded.

  Her hand shaking, Diana reached for her computer’s power switch. It was the only way she could think of to make it stop.

  She could barely hear GROB’s voice over the sound effects. “I’m sorry . . . never should have . . . let’s get . . .” GROB extended his hand toward Nadia. “Let’s go now!”

  Diana recoiled, standing and knocking over her desk chair. Was there anywhere safe? She had to turn the computer off. Press the power switch and hold it down until the system surrendered.

  “Come on!” GROB moved closer to Nadia, his hand overlapping hers. For the moment, at least, the explosions had stopped. “I can get us out of here. Trust me.”

  Could she trust anyone? Her breath came in gasps as she steadied herself against the desk and stared at the monitor.

  “Give me your hand!” GROB said.

  It felt as if the sound still echoed as the empty voice balloon over GROB’s head faded and disappeared.

  She reached for the keyboard and watched her fingers as they typed link/, almost as if someone else were in control of them. Why would that work when nothing else she’d typed had made a difference? But Nadia’s hand connected with GROB’s, and instantly new surroundings materialized around them—the ocean and beach littered with phalluses became an old-fashioned town green with a pergola and trees.

  With a click Diana had Nadia release GROB’s hand and she could breathe again.

  “I’m sorry,” GROB said. “I’m so sorry. Did that freak you out? I thought it was safe to go there, but OtherWorld has become infested with griefers.”

  “I know,” Diana said, wiping a skim of sweat from her upper lip. “I’ve run into them before.”

  “I shouldn’t have taken you there. Are you okay? I’m really, really sorry.”

  “I’m okay,” Diana said, even though she wasn’t. “I have to go.”

  There was a pause. “Okay, okay. I understand. Can I see you again?”

  Diana didn’t answer. She could still feel lingering shock waves from the explosions.