by A. L. Davroe
“What was all that for?” I ask.
“We are assessing your character,” she responds. The acolyte returns, this time with a small black box. “You may approach.”
Without my mind or body to propel it, the chair begins rolling toward the massive chair where the Oracle is seated. Somehow, as if by a feat of magic, my chair climbs the stairs and stops the moment the wheels skim the hem of her white robes. This close I can see she’s unique in a way that Aristocrats could only dream about. She opens the box and presents me with the contents.
There is a thick stack of hand-sized papers inside, the depiction on the back a simple black spider on a perfectly symmetrical web. “Divide the deck and select the center card.”
I do as she requests, picking up half of the deck and pulling the center card from the bottom of the stack in my hand. I hold it up.
“Ace of Diamonds,” she says. “I will grant you one bodily Modification wish.”
The acolyte races up the stairs and presents me with a round red chip with little ridges along the edge. “Is this a coin?” I ask, taking the chip in reverence. Coins are so rare, a true gift from the past.
“Of course it’s not a coin,” the Oracle says. An acolyte appears at my side and drops a small bag into my lap. The Oracle points to it. “That is coin.”
Openmouthed, I touch the little bag. “Is this leather?” I ask. “Actual, real animal skin?” Excited, I dig inside and pull out one of the coins. It’s the color of the coin called a penny and it has the profile of a man wearing an odd hat engraved on it. I hold it up and compare it to the chip. One is cold etched metal while the other is smooth plastic. “If this is a coin then what is this?”
“It’s a Modification chip,” the Oracle says to me. “You may use it now or later. Whichever you prefer. You can change anything about your avatar—your voice, your hair or skin, your build. Just use it intelligently.”
I stare at the chip in the palm of my hand. “I can do anything?”
She sighs. “Yes. What else would I mean?”
Excited, I look from her to the chip to the obvious use for my chip. I can use this chip to get the one thing I can’t have. “Can I use it to get my legs back?”
Her eyes go a little wide, as if she’s surprised by my request. “Well, of course.” She pauses for a moment and stares at me, her gray eyes—so much like mine—calculating. “Is that what you want?”
Without hesitation, I extend the chip toward her. “Yes.”
She looks at the chip, but doesn’t take it. “You know,” she begins, her voice low, “you could ask for something more general—to be perfect or whole or something of the sort. It may offer you more. You could be more beautiful—like an Aristocrat. Someone that beautiful is bound to turn heads and instill the love of another. Isn’t that what you want? To be idolized and loved?”
I meet her eyes. She looks so much like Mom—a woman who attracted the attention, adoration, and love of my father. Dad didn’t change her in the slightest. He could have done anything to improve my mother, but he didn’t. I look down at the chip in my hand. I’ve only ever wanted to look like an Aristocrat—to attract the love of Quentin.
But really, all I needed was the love of my father. If I had died instead of Dad, would he put me in the game? What would I look like? How would he preserve me for all time?
I already know that answer. He wouldn’t make me an Aristocrat. Dad loved me just the way I was.
Looking up, I shake my head. “I don’t want that. I just want to be able to walk on my own two legs again. I should experience the world my father wanted me to see as the daughter he would want to remember. That’s the only real way to honor his memory—to be who he wanted me to be.”
Smiling, she takes the chip. “A wise choice. Good luck, Anansi Child.”
I open my mouth to ask her why everyone keeps calling me that but, as she settles back, she snaps her fingers and the world goes dark.
Chapter Twelve
Post-American Date: 7/2/231
Longitudinal Timestamp: 1:53 p.m.
Location: Utopia Zone, Ellani Drexel’s
Private Square; Nexis
I wake up in an odd bed made of cool green threads and scratchy green sheets. For a moment, I struggle to free myself until realization makes me go still. Green.
Sticks. Dirt. Grass. Leaves—extinct things.
Eyes wide and hands shaking, I reach out and touch one of the leaves hanging around me. It’s tender and delicate as pastry crust, but smooth as paper. It has tiny veins like the ones that run up my arm.
Overwhelmed, I reach out and touch every leaf in turn, gentle and reverent. The sudden desire to pick one and take it with me for keeps, to scratch at it and discover what the blood running through its veins looks like, makes me recoil my hand. How could I want to destroy something so beautiful? Just for the sake of possession and discovery? Swallowing, I clench my fists until the unwanted urges pass.
Awe dampened by fear of my own natural human tendencies, I tentatively reach down and run my hands through the grass—hair-like leaves for the earth. I dig my fingers into the dirt, loving the moist grain of it under my fingernails. I’ve never touched dirt; all the dirt of the earth is covered in Evanescence. I’ve only seen it from my window, out where the Disfavored walk, and this dirt isn’t like the hard, swirling dust of the wasteland on the other side of the dome. This is fertile, welcoming stuff, full of strange bits of dying things and…I pull my hand back with a start as something cold, wet, and slimy wriggles between my fingers. I stare at the slick, pink-brown creature with no eyes or legs as it wriggles in the dirt and wrinkle my nose.
What the heck is that thing? Not anything I want to touch again. Wanting to escape the foreign creature I get on my hands and knees and…I pause. Knees. I have knees. I look between my arms. Yes, they’re there. Two wonderful, healthy legs. Not even scarred. And they’re my legs. I’d know them anywhere. Legs that I always thought were knock-kneed and fat, not shapely at all. But, sparks, is it wonderful to see them.
I grin.
They’re here. The joy of it is like an explosion of electricity, winging to every nerve in my body, making me want to dance.
With a cry of joy, I leap up and touch them, wanting to prove that I’m not seeing things. Yes, my skin. I feel my hands and I know my own flesh.
Overjoyed, I begin sobbing, hysterical. As I cry, I walk, then I jog, and then I run, twirling and shrieking with joy through what I’m understanding to be a mythical wood filled with trees and plants that in real life are extinct. I crash through an actual stream with water so clear and pure that I can see the rainbow-colored pebbles at the bottom. Shafts of true sunlight break through the bright green canopy, casting motes of dust and the tiny bodies of insects in golden relief against the woody undergrowth, warming my skin when I pass beneath them. I suck in air that is hot but moist and has a taste of something rich and secret—as if simply breathing it in might be a cure for all ailments.
My heart is hammering a frantic beat, my lungs want to pop, and my eyes threaten to dry out if I spill yet another tear, but I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. I have to move and revel and worship the wonder around me. It’s a dream, I’m sure of it. But it’s the best dream I could ever have. The only thing that would make it better would be to have my father step out from beyond one of these massive trees and take me up into his arms.
This is what it’s like to be alive.
I run and I run and I run until I trip on a root and face-plant into the dirt, abruptly ending my revelry. Wincing, I get to my feet. Ouch. That really hurt. And I’m bleeding. My brand new wonderful knee is bleeding down my perfect, chubby calf. I frown. Can people bleed in dreams?
For the first time, I really take stock of myself and where I am. I’m wearing leather. Some kind of soft black vest pulled tight over a black shirt made of fibers I’ve
never felt before. I have on a pleated skirt, black and yellow and red stripes with stretchy black cutoffs underneath. I’m wearing knee-high black boots, a broad utility belt, and that little pouch with the coins at my hip. The Designer in me recoils. This outfit is ugly, and—even in one of my worst nightmares—I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing any of it. I touch the skirt. “I hate stripes.”
Spinning in a circle, I see sunlight seeping through the leaves and beyond it blue sky. I can hear the song of birds, the whisper of wind through the leaves, the creak of branches, and the hum of an insect. These are things that I wouldn’t know or recognize the true sound of, even in my subconscious, so I can’t be imagining or dreaming this place.
Smiling, I say to no one in particular, “I’m still in the game.” I’m not with the Oracle anymore. I look back at my legs. “She granted my wish.”
So now what? I look around. Play? Play what? I’m in the middle of the woods. Granted, I’m quite happy to be here, this is exactly what I wanted to see—what Dad did with his world, why everyone wanted to play this game so much. But where are the other players?
Circling again, I search for some sign of life. There’s a small indentation in the ground. A path? I follow it, taking the time to marvel at this virtual paradise that my father created and left for me as a memory of himself.
Eventually, the path intersects with another that widens and gives way to broad, flat stones. Bending down, I touch the dusty white rock at my feet. Marble, like the stuff on the walls back at the temple—the stuff that Michelangelo carved those wondrous statues from. I look one way and then another. For as far as I can see in either direction there is only the marble road cut into the green-brown of the forest. I look up. Here, I can see the sky. The bright blue sky filled with fluffy clouds. Dad was right. The sun is a blood-red hex on the land back home, but the sun here is a tiny yellow-white orb—a distant onlooker.
Despite wanting to use my legs, I lie down on the road and stare up at the sky. I’ve never seen such a vibrant shade of blue, never known such pure smoke clouds. They look almost like Alterations for the sky. Gray, white, blue, and slightly gold tinged.
Lifting my hands, I reach out to the distant beyond, wanting to be part of it. This is true beauty. This is what people should be wearing on their skin; true clouds should glide over Custom blue eyes.
I frame the image between my fingers. Instead of finding new things to dazzle our eyes, we should have memorialized this thing of beauty, should have made it so that when I was born I could look at this and know that this is what we destroyed.
I lower my hands. It would be a good lesson.
I glance around once more. This whole place is a lesson. A lesson in what we lost.
A lesson from my father to the world: look what you’ve done…and you don’t even remember doing it.
Recalling that strange urge I had to pick the plants for my own, to break the leaves so that I could have their hidden secrets, I put my hands over my face, hiding the tears of shame and the grimace of loss.
Chapter Thirteen
Post-American Date: 7/2/231
Longitudinal Timestamp: 3:00 p.m.
Location: Utopia Zone, Ellani Drexel’s Private Square; Nexis
It takes me quite some time to convince myself to open my eyes once more. I almost don’t want to see the beauty that I can no longer have. But what would be the point in coming here if I didn’t play? Holding my breath, I scramble to my feet and stumble down the embankment. I glance in one direction and then the other. There’s nothing to make one way different than the other and no indication as to where I should go.
“Hm,” I breathe to myself. “Which way?”
A gentle breeze picks up. From somewhere above me, perhaps from an overhanging tree branch, a thin silver thread drifts down and lands on my shoulder. I bat at it, annoyed with it in the same way I get frustrated with strands of hair that get stuck to my clothes and taunt me with their phantom tickles until I find them and feed them to the disposal unit. Instead of tumbling from my shoulder, the strand just seems to get wrapped around my wrist.
The wind blows again, making the strand tighten and yank at my skin. For a moment I just stand there, letting the warm air pull at the string that in turn tugs at me—as if it’s trying to tell me to come along with it.
I bite my lip, curious. “What if I go this way?” I turn my body against the breeze and move to take a step. All at once, the silver strand tightens on my wrist and wrenches me so hard that I stagger backward and tumble onto my butt.
Wincing, I say, “Okay, maybe not.” Wary of getting more tangled in the string, I struggle to my feet. Feeling like a fool, I lift my wrist and speak to the string. “So, we’re going this way then?”
As if in response, the breeze buffets my back, and the string begins to tug once more as if there’s an invisible balloon attached somewhere high above and it’s caught in the breeze. “Well, okay then. We’re going this way.”
I head down the white marble road, all the while the sun warming my back, the breeze pushing me like the gentle hand of an invisible giant, and the silver strand tugging at me like an anxious child.
One moment I’m on the white road, surrounded by thick undergrowth and the next I’m stepping into a space that looks eerily similar to the wastelands beyond the Outer Block and feels as hot as the incinerator in the basement of my housing unit.
As I come to a halt on the cracked red-brown dirt, the wind whispers away and the silver strand unravels, dropping from my wrist. Lifting my hand, I rub my skin, the warm phantom feeling of the string still present on my flesh. I scan the sky, hoping that I can see the strand hanging above, but there’s nothing there. I speak anyway. “What now?”
No answer.
I blink down into the valley below. For a good distance in any direction, there’s only a blank white sky, a hot sun, and the yellow-red-brown of the gritty earth. There are walls of odd rock rising in the distance, looking like forgotten asymmetrical building blocks. I turn around. The cool, lush invitation of the forest stands before me and to either side of me—an impossible wall of wilderness stationed in the desert.
I spin back and squint harder against the wavy haze of heat drifting over the desert. “Why’d you bring me here?” I mumble. And then I see them—arms flailing against the wind blowing over the bald peaks. Wind turbines. And below the superstation, in the center of the vast nothingness of the valley below, is a town.
I nearly dive into the gurgling fountain at the edge of the city. Falling to my knees, I take heaping palmfuls of water, burying my face in the cool, clear liquid and then taking huge gulps of it until my thirst is slaked.
As I let myself sink back on my haunches I grow aware of the people around me. Suddenly embarrassed by my actions, I struggle to my feet and glance about. No one seems to have noticed. If they have, it’s apparently normal for people to come staggering out of the desert and face-plant into the first instance of water.
The people here dress in plain, functional clothing. Thin white shirts, broad leather hats, sturdy brown pants, and pointed boots that clink when they walk. Here and there, I see a Modification or an Alteration, but most have hard, windblown faces, eyes that look permanently squinted against the sun, and skin that’s sort of reddish-brown, but they don’t look unfriendly. I swallow a thick ball of spit and scrub my hands against my cutoffs.
“Okay,” I say to myself. “You’ve gotten yourself here, Ellani, now what?” I spin in a slow circle. This place, wherever it is, looks a little more promising than the Outer Block. There is a broad central road sprawled out before me and to either side rise brick and stucco buildings with real glass windows. There are no signs or road names posted anywhere, but there aren’t any transport vehicles to direct, only people walking back and forth—some guiding huge four-legged animals that are larger and sleeker looking than dogs.
My stomach
chooses this moment to growl. I cover my torso, embarrassed. I didn’t think one could get hungry in a game. Though if I can sweat and get thirsty and feel like I’m being incinerated in the desert I guess I can get hungry, too. One would think the game would wake up a player if her body were demanding sustenance, but that doesn’t make sense; I ate right before coming into the game.
Is it possible that my biological clock runs differently in the game? I have no idea. There’s so much I don’t understand. I wish I had paid more attention to Dad when he went off on his little tangents about Nexis.
My stomach growls again. Either way, I’m hungry now. Chewing a fingernail, I investigate the street before me. Normally our habitat control unit, Tasha, provides all my dietary needs, but I know that the Aristocrats sometimes go to eateries where high-end foods are served. I’ve never been to one. However, I remember Dad saying they were modeled on something called restaurants.
I touch the purse of coins at my hip. “Okay,” I whisper to myself. “First things first.” I walk up to a brown-eyed girl sitting on a bench outside of a building with a sign reading “Express.”
“Excuse me?”
She puts her hand to her broad brim hat—probably to keep it from slipping off—and tips up her head. “Oh,” she exclaims with a massive smile filled with yellowish pointed teeth.
Eyes going wide, I take a step back, heart suddenly in my throat—cutting off my breathing.
“I’m sorry,” she continues. “I was off in another world.” She laughs to herself, her teeth looking threatening in the harsh light. “What can I do for you?”
