by A. L. Davroe
Standing, he offers his hand. “Come on.”
For a long moment, I stare up at him. I know that taking his hand might mean something, that this is an offering for more than just a tutorial on how to function in this game. He’s inviting me along with him. At least for a short time. Accepting me when so few have done it in the past. Telling me that, for now, I’m beautiful enough to look at.
Eager to belong, eager to touch, I reach up and take his hand.
Chapter Fifteen
Post-American Date: 7/2/231
Longitudinal Timestamp: 7:18 p.m.
Location: Dome 5: Evanescence
I sit up with a start and blink into the darkness. I can’t see or hear anything. Frightened, I lift my hands to my face only to find that I’m wearing a pair of caps and a blinder. I pull them off and squint at my surroundings. I’m back in Dad’s office.
Meems leans forward, her face both curious and cautious. “Well?”
I stare at her, bewildered. “What happened? Why’d I come back?”
She nods toward the VR set on the bedside table. “Your time ran out. The game disconnects you after six hours.”
I lift the blanket away from my stomach. I don’t have to look to know they’re gone, but I do anyway. Yup, gone. I drop the blanket and slump my shoulders. “I had legs.” I look to Meems with urgency. “I had legs, and I saw my mother, and there were trees and grass.” I flop back down on the bed. “Quick, send me back.”
Meems smiles even though she’s shaking her head. “I cannot.”
Knitting my brow, I frown. “Why not?”
“You have to wait.”
I frown harder. “Why?”
“He built in a safety. You cannot stay for too long, and you have to spend a certain amount of time outside of the game. G-Corp would not have accepted it otherwise. You still need to be a productive citizen, Ellani. Spending too much time dwelling in the past will not build the future.”
I puff out my cheeks, annoyed. “But I was being productive,” I mutter. “I was learning what my father wanted me to see.”
She gestures toward the workstation. “You still have the files. That, too, is learning through your father.”
“You’re right,” I sigh. I stare dreamily through the window as Meems disconnects the sensors from my arm. “The sky used to be so beautiful, Meems.”
“So I have heard.”
I watch her place the sensors back into the small drawer in the VR set. “You should go in and see.”
Straightening, she wipes her hands on her apron. “I cannot do that. Virtual reality is not for robots.”
I look away. “I know. Sorry. It was stupid of me to have suggested it.” I know that VR doesn’t work on artificial intelligence. “Sometimes I forget.”
Meems sniffs. “I do not.”
Domestic androids are programmed with a vast spectrum of emotional and cognitive functions. They can be everything from maids to nannies to foster parents to mail-order brides to sexual or emotional companions. When it comes to self-perception, identity, and the full gamut of human capability, they are just like humans.
But they aren’t real humans. If I wanted to, I could turn Meems off with one master command. I could take off her skin, exposing her inner mechanics to the cold, cruel eyes of the world. I could disassemble her in less than a day. I could reprogram her to be a stone-hearted warrior like the security droids patrolling the wall. I could make her forget those she loves, make her be someone different than she is.
I’d never do that, of course. I love Meems. There are days when I wish Dad had never felt it necessary for me to understand at such a young age that she wasn’t a real person. Most days, if I don’t think hard about it, it feels like Meems is my real mother. Even now, though Katrina is supposed to be my guardian, it’s Meems who is my caretaker.
When Dad was alive, part of me wished that she and Dad had loved each other—that we were a real family. There were days when I’d walk in on Meems and Dad talking in hushed voices, their eyes intent on each other’s, and I swore that they did. That gave me hope, but I know it was a pretty lie I told myself.
The bottom line is that Meems is not a human. She is not my mother. She was not my father’s lover. She’s a creation of humans, forever to live with the knowledge that she can never be one of us and will always be subject to our whims. Even her skin is not her own.
And I can see that she hates that about herself.
A long time ago, Dad offered to purchase Meems an updated chasis. Meems was horrified by the prospect. She said, “Why would I change my own skin? This is who I am. This is what I look like, this is how my family knows me.” Back then I agreed with her. I thought it would be horrifying to wake up to someone I loved looking like someone else.
But as I aged, I realized that I did it every day. My schoolmates and neighbors, my family members, my best friend and the boy I had a crush on, they all changed on a day-to-day basis. People changing skin became so normal to me that I no longer felt like change was horrifying. It was good to change what you were into something better. I even wanted that for myself.
Like androids, we humans change our bodies. Often, we do it so much that some of us are more machine than human. Which makes me wonder: what is a human, really? What makes me more worthy of experiencing a blue sky with voluptuous clouds than Meems? She has value. She’s more valuable to society than I am at this point. Yet I still enjoy an aspect of society that she does not.
Disturbed, I puzzle over this as Meems lifts me off the bed and places me back in the hover-chair. I can’t help but glance back at the VR set. “When can I go back?”
She spins the chair toward the workstation. “Six hours in, eighteen hours out. That is the law.”
I scrunch my nose. “I won’t be able to concentrate after that.” I glance over my shoulder. “Maybe I can just go to bed?” Sleep and dream about green forests, blue skies, white marble roads…and a dark-eyed boy with an amazing smile.
Meems lifts my hand off the armrest and places it on the desk. “If I put you back in that bed, you would not sleep. You have just slept six hours; your body will not want rest.”
I sigh. “I know.” VR sets put the body in a sleep-like state, relaxing it in such a way that the body achieves a R.E.M. cycle while the mind is still deeply engrossed in the system. That’s why there are so many monitors and sensors associated with going under VR. The set monitors the external environment for the subject and will withdraw him or her from the game if there is an abnormality.
As Meems perches in the chair beside me, I place my elbows on the desk, and I pick up the chip she left me. Glancing at her, I see that she’s sitting ramrod straight and staring off into the corner. It’s obvious she’s in her own little world and doesn’t want to talk, so I insert the disk into the workstation and begin clicking through files.
Dad had a huge collection of encyclopedias, history books, and personal notes. Like the game, it’s like finding another part of my father that I never knew. I try to find something that looks as interesting as what I’ve just experienced. But it’s no use; nothing could be as incredible as actually seeing the real thing. Dad must have known that. I turn back to her. “I can’t concentrate.”
She doesn’t look up. “What did you do?”
I shift my gaze down to the desk top. “I ran,” I admit, sheepish. “And I watched the sky.”
Her brow wrinkles. “That is it?”
Feeling like an idiot, I shrug. “If the sky really looked like that here, then maybe it wouldn’t be so strange to spend hours staring at it,” I reason, looking back up at her. “They move, you know. The clouds. I didn’t know that. I thought the clouds always stayed the same. Like how they look on the nano-dome. Or, maybe that they just sort of hung low and clung around things like the poisonous clouds in the wasteland.” Frowning, I shake my head, despera
te to understand. “How could we destroy it, Meems? The sky? And the trees?”
Meems stares at me for a long moment then says, “Why do you want to destroy your face with Modifications and Alterations?”
I blink at her, incredulous. “That’s different.”
“How?”
“Mods and Alts are for improvement, to make people beautiful.”
Meems stands and points at the picture on the screen in front of me. I follow her direction. It’s a picture of a large, gangly, four-legged creature with a hump on its back. It’s standing beside a leathery-faced man with an odd scruffy thing on his jaw. “That man had facial hair. Do you think his wife thought he was not beautiful?”
I scoff. “Obviously she hated it. Body hair is useless and silly. That’s why we engineered it out of the human genome.” Bodily hairlessness is, thankfully, something that I retained from my father’s Customized genes.
“And you do not think that making one’s skin sparkle is also useless and silly?” Meems counters. “I am certain that humans evolved to possess body hair because it was once advantageous. However, I do not see how sparkling skin could be advantageous.”
Biting my lip, I think about her words for a few seconds, then I say, “It’s to help us progress in society. Being beautiful makes you stand out.”
“And who decided that sparkling skin was beautiful and beards were not?” she wonders. “From what I can see of humans, you often destroy wonderful things in the pursuit of something that your delusions make you think is more wonderful.”
I look away. I think of Delia and how she wants to destroy her lovely eyes. I think of Quentin and all his desecrated Dolls. I think of pictures I’ve seen of old cities like the one called New York and compare it against the forest in Nexis. I remember my childhood horror at the idea of Meems changing her skin…because her body and face made her who she was, and I didn’t want her to be anybody else.
Meems straightens and turns away. “What you humans need to do is find beauty in the fact that something is naturally the way it is. Perhaps then you wouldn’t be so destructive.”
Blushing a little bit, I say, “I did find something there that I found kind of beautiful.”
Her brows quirk. “Oh?”
“There was a boy there.”
Her eyes seem to dance. “And?”
I look away, feeling stupid. “We started to talk…and then I got pulled out.”
Meems’s mechanical chuckle makes me look up. “No wonder you want to return so bad.”
Chapter Sixteen
Post-American Date: 7/2/231
Longitudinal Timestamp: 8:02 p.m.
Location: Dome 5: Evanescence
When Meems leaves, I keep mentally going back to the game and that boy. I hope he’s still there when I go back in. I hope he’ll wait for me. Anxious to fill the hours until I’m able to play again, I pick up my flex-bracelet. I snap open the bracelet, letting the nano shingles realign and snap back together so that the once cylindrical bracelet is now a flat screen. Bending the lower half to a sixty degree angle, I set it on the windowsill and sit back.
I am able to navigate the applications inside my flex-bracelet using the G-Chip neuro-link. I turn it on, call up holo-projection mode, and open the puzzle program Dad uploaded onto my G-Chip. Dad gave me a puzzle to work on the night he died. Ever since I was a little girl, he gave me complicated encoded puzzles to decode, each one more difficult than the last. This one, it seems, is the puzzle to shame all puzzles. The image manifests in what looks like a massive knot of fiber-optic string, each string representing a line of code that I have to unravel and realign. If the pattern behind these puzzles holds true, once I’ve written a program to decode this puzzle, a private message that he left for me will appear.
It’s extracurricular activities like this that make me the best Programmer in Paramount Prep. I used to hate them, but now this puzzle is the only thing I have left of my father. I’m going to solve it, going to read that message.
As I puzzle through the code, one of Tasha’s automated vacuums wanders into the room, drawing my attention back to the insular world of my father’s workroom. I open a neuro-link to Tasha, letting my G-Chip read my active thought processes and send them to the habitat control computer.
“Not now, I’m doing work.”
The vacuum pauses in the center of the room, the light on the top flashing red. Tasha’s response appears as a thought in my mind, her computer-generated voice halting. “Are you studying?”
I frown, wondering if she’s teasing me. She must know that I have not left my room in weeks. How could I be doing schoolwork? I cock my head at the camera in the corner of the room. Her sensors watch me, observe my movement, and constantly monitor my chip. “So, what if I am?”
“You do not need ears to watch the wall.”
With a beep, the vacuum continues to hum across the floor, the light now flashing green. Smiling, I give up my fight with Tasha and look back to my flex-bracelet.
As I demystify the complex jumble, a message pops up on the bottom of the screen. It’s Delia. My heart leaps and I grin, stupid with happiness.
Today was a bad day. I miss you.
A flush of shame heats my face. I haven’t spoken to her in weeks; I’ve been too busy wallowing in my own self-pity and embarrassment. Poor Delia, she must be worried sick about me. I sit forward, ready to write back, but I don’t know what to say. A massive wall has gone up between what was and what is. I’m not the same person anymore and, even if I could climb that wall and peek over to see her, I wouldn’t know what to say to her.
But I have to say something. She’s been sending me messages since the night of the ball, sometimes three or four a day. Sparks, why didn’t I even bother to pick up my flex-bracelet and check my messages? I can’t ignore her any longer than I already inadvertently have. I open the first one, an old vis-call from the night of the ball.
Wanted to let you know how beautiful you were in your dress tonight. I thought your mask was super cracked, so what if Quentin didn’t? He’s so Passé. Love you most. Dee
I smile to myself, thinking how very much I love seeing Dee’s smiling face right now. And Quentin… If he thought I was atrocious then, I can only imagine how disgusted he’d be of me now. He’d probably have Shadow stomp my face in like he did my holo-mask. Still, I miss seeing him.
The messages continue from there, vis-calls and text messages. Dee thinking that I’m not coming to school because I’m ashamed and telling me not to be silly, and then Dee getting concerned when I don’t respond, then her suddenly leaving morbid, awful messages like: I miss you so much. It hurts and I can’t stop crying, I can’t believe it. I feel so alone. I wish you were here. Make it stop. On a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.
I sit back, heartsick. Doesn’t she know about the accident? Why hasn’t she just come to see me? She must know I’ve been injured and that my father is dead. Wouldn’t Uncle Simon or Bastian have told her? Wasn’t it part of The Broadcast?
One would think that the recent winner of the Civil Enrichment Award getting in a fatal accident might make the news. Baffled, I pull up archived copies of The Broadcast from the days following the ball. There are pictures of the ball, of the awards ceremony, of me and my father. Tiny pixelated gems of the pride and joy in my father’s face, of him holding my arm and posing with me. Of our last few moments. I save each one to my personal files and keep searching.
Finally, I find the file that I’m looking for.
Zane is the one reporting. He looks grim, and his voice holds none of the charismatic cadence it normally does. “It is with a heavy heart that I join Evanescence’s Elite as we say good-bye to one of our most gifted citizens. Late Saturday night, just hours after receiving the prestigious Civil Enrichment Award for his development of the groundbreaking virtual-reality game, Nexis, Warren Drexel was killed i
n a freak pod accident. After extensive investigation funded by none other than President Cyr himself, it has been concluded that the accident was caused by a sensor malfunction within the pod. Joining Citizen Drexel in death is his daughter, Ellani Drexel—who was removed from life support after it was determined that there was no hope for revival. Sources claim Ellani had shown incredibly promising aptitude scores which, in time, would have surpassed her father’s. In light of the loss of not one, but two of the city’s most valuable Programmers, the Cyrs themselves have shown up to say good-bye to Warren and Ellani.”
I stare in mute horror as the camera pans out, revealing an astounding number of Aristocrats lined up along Citizen’s Way as two memorial pods drift down the main hover-way. Following after them in gleaming open-air pods are the hollow-looking Uncle Simon and Bastian, the tearful Delia and her family, a few other people who worked with my father, and of course, the Cyrs. Lady Cyr, for all her statuesque beauty, looks particularly distressed. And then there is Quentin…
The boy I love, the boy that I’d do anything to make look at me. The boy who now believes I’m dead. And for once, he doesn’t look bored. For once, there’s emotion on Quentin’s face. He actually looks grieved. So does Shadow.
The pods stop at Central Square, and everyone begins to disembark. Delia is suddenly streaking across the square. She throws herself at Shadow—punching and kicking, screaming, but I can’t hear what she’s saying in the commotion. All I hear is my thundering heart as Bastian pulls her from Shadow. She struggles away from him and collapses into a sobbing mess next to one of the memorial pods. Her frightened little sister, Nina, attempts to go up to her, comfort her, but Delia pushes her away, making her land on her rear end. Nina starts to cry, too, and their parents look mortified. I feel mortified. Delia would never push Nina like that. Nina means the world to Delia. Tears begin spilling down my face. “No,” I whimper.
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m screaming, “I’m not dead. I’m not dead. I’m not in there. I’m right here, Dee. It’s empty. It’s a lie. Look at me! Look. At. Me.”
