Walking in Two Worlds
Page 5
“I would’ve been brainwashed either way.” Feng scowled back down at his phone and swiped. His face softened.
“Remember this?” Feng held up his phone up to reveal a photo of Liumei, more than a decade younger, tears streaked across her face. The poor quality of the photo testified to its age, and that it had been taken from a distance.
“Where’s that from?”
“Remember when you were staying with us? One night you came running back to my parents’ apartment.” Feng tilted the phone back to examine the image. “I heard you slam the door. Then—bam, bam, bam—a loud banging on the other side of it.” He pinch-zoomed the picture slowly. “I snuck out of bed and took this photo.” He angled the screen back to Liumei.
His aunt’s face turned serious. She focused on the road in front of her. “I begged the authorities not to take me.” She shook her head slowly. “Your parents promised to report me if I engaged in any more ‘subversive activities.’ ” She appeared to stare at something far down the road. “I left China the next week.”
“That’s when the trouble started for my parents.” Feng put a quiet punctuation mark on the end of the exchange. He felt his aunt looking at him as he stared out the window, the tires still humming beneath them.
“I remember your name was Aaliyah when I was growing up,” Feng said, turning back to her. “I remember you changed it to Liumei when you were still living with us in Xinjiang.”
His aunt nodded. “I thought I needed to fit in.”
“Maybe you were right,” Feng said softly.
“No, it wasn’t healthy. Pretending to be someone else.”
“You haven’t changed your name back.”
“I’m proud of who I am—of who we are.” Feng noticed a faint hint of desperation audible in his aunt’s voice as she corrected herself. “But once I started school under this name, and got my medical degree, and started to practice…it’s too hard to change it back now.” Feng studied her from the corner of his eye.
“Everyone here has a reason. Or an excuse. A story. I hope you haven’t become like them.” Feng wondered whether he’d just crossed the line with his aunt. He debated apologizing but he said nothing further.
“I’m not some outsider who doesn’t care about Xinjiang. That will always be my home.” Liumei slowed the cadence of her speech. “Even if I never go back.” She appeared to contemplate this.
“Sorry.” Feng examined his sneakers. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
They flew over a deep pothole, and Feng felt his stomach drop. A few feet later the vehicle made a loud thump and found level ground again.
Feng watched his aunt check the rearview, and he glanced out his side mirror. He could see only a cloud of red dust behind them. His aunt spoke again. “Our family always planned to leave Xinjiang. We probably should’ve done it sooner, for your sake. But you’re here now.”
“Uncle should’ve let me go to Beijing.”
“Feng, I don’t think you understand how much things changed for us. In my lifetime, we were free, we practiced our faith, we spoke our language. Now we all speak Mandarin.”
“What’s wrong with Mandarin?”
“Nothing, but we have our own language.”
“Well, we can all speak English now too.” Feng waved his phone, calling attention to its ability to translate the conversation in real time. “So what?”
“It’s just not right,” Liumei said. “The party controls everything you do, where you go, when you can leave the house.”
Feng sighed. “No argument there, believe me.” He turned to look out the window at the countryside. “But why not let me live closer to where the action is, in Beijing, instead of here in the middle of nowhere?”
His aunt ran her hands through her hair. “Anyway, I didn’t mean for this ride to get so intense.” She took a deep breath. “My brother—your uncle—and I just want you to see there’s more to life than…whatever you’re up to online.”
Feng thought of his clanmates. As the red earth and trees flew by, neither he nor his aunt spoke.
Feng stared through his phone to a spot just to their south. The screen lit up and bathed his face in a copper glow. The window his phone offered into the Floraverse showed a fountain of energy shooting up into the sky from a place just beyond the trees. It was an extraordinary sight, like nothing he’d seen before in AR.
“Whoa,” Feng whispered. He tried to make sense of the power source spewing light into the sky behind the forest. Though he hadn’t been aware of it a moment ago, it now consumed Feng’s thoughts.
CHAPTER 14
“Infinity axes are a quarter bitcoin,” Bugz said, referring to the last of the tomahawks she planned to sell. She stood atop a beautiful red mesa with a seven-foot-tall Amazon facing her.
“Of course, and can I get a selfie too, please?” the Amazon asked.
“Sure, no problem.” Bugz leaned in for the screenshot.
“I watch your streams every day,” the fan said, posing at her preferred angle. “When I’m in the ’Verse, I’ve always got the stream window open, and if I’m out there,” she continued, referring to the real world, “I watch you on my phone.”
“Cool.” Bugz smiled. “I like your beadwork,” she added, referring to the pink, blue, and red geometric patterns her fan wore on her cape and leggings.
“Thanks, they’re Quechuan designs, from my Ancestors. I want to be as fierce a warrior as you someday. You’re such an inspiration.”
“Good luck,” Bugz said. She always tried to shower her fans with good vibes and to answer all their questions. It seemed like the right thing to do, and it was good for business. “Well, next time we’re online together, put your name in the chat screen and I’ll shout you out during the stream.”
“Oh, okay, awesome! And thanks again.” The fan picked up her giant tomahawk and flew off into the sky using a jetpack.
Bugz scanned the desert plain. She came here, far from Lake of the Torches, to conduct these sorts of transactions. She swiped her hands apart quickly to open a livestream.
“Hey, hope everyone’s having an awesome day in the ’Verse. Just a quick update to say I’m all sold out, but I’m back again next week, same location. And a quick shout-out to everyone who came by today to hang out, buy something, or just take a look around. Big shouts to all of you—especially Big_L_N, SchroederCat, and PeruvianGoddess—for the pics. Tag me. Hit the Subscribe button. We’ll see you soon.”
Bugz closed the chat window and stared off into the distance. The mesa on which she stood was the only high ground for miles. In the west, a burning red sun began to set. It set untold millions of fine dust particles on the horizon ablaze. The virtual scene stirred Bugz’s heart. She liked to come here to escape the challenges of the real world. Her first time climbing the mesa came after a run-in with a girl at school who lived in a town close to the Rez.
Now, standing again on the mesa in the ’Verse, Bugz opened a video recording of the interaction from her saved files. The security camera footage she’d hacked from the school showed two teenagers walking together. Bugz remembered how she’d looked up to the girl. The popular one. As the video approached the moment when her now former friend body shamed her, Bugz snapped the video window closed and looked back to the sunset. Why the heck did I rewatch that? she asked herself.
Darkness swallowed the light of dusk. The night sky looked so much more vivid in the ’Verse. Here, the Milky Way seemed to pulse with activity. Ringed planets appeared as though within reach. Shooting stars illuminated the land every few minutes.
The wind picked up and howled in the distance. Bugz tried to focus on the beauty around her, but found her thoughts dragging her back to the girl from the security camera footage. Bugz suspected there was some flaw at the core of her being. If only she could locate it and remove it, she co
uld heal herself, like a surgeon.
The anxiety loop roared to life inside her head again. Bugz wondered why she kept dwelling on negative thoughts like these. Does everyone do this? Perhaps she simply couldn’t get along with other young women. No, that’s not true. She’d just spent the weekend before hanging out with her cousin Ally. Her beautiful cousin Ally. Bugz thought of the cut marks she’d noticed on her cousin’s arms. Ally had rolled her sleeves down as soon as Bugz asked about the scars on her biceps, changing the subject. But Bugz knew what they meant. She’d heard kids at school talking about ‘cutters.’ For a moment, Bugz imagined plunging a knife into her own arm. She shook her head violently, shuddering at the thought.
Bugz took a deep breath. She’d always assumed people who felt the way she felt at that moment could trace it back to some sort of deep childhood trauma. Yet there was nothing in her own life that she could point to. Sure, life on the Rez wasn’t glamorous. In fact, the gravel roads, mixed-breed dogs, and homes with cheap siding often looked like poverty to outsiders. But she’d grown up in a loving home wrapped with all the supports of a vibrant community and culture. She figured she had no right to feel like this.
The Floraverse sky lit up as a meteor dragged its green-and-yellow tail toward Lake of the Torches. Bugz sighed, her heart as heavy as a million pounds.
CHAPTER 15
“What do you see, Feng?” his aunt asked. She slowed the SUV to a crawl as they entered the main town site on the Rez. “Are you logged into the Floraverse?”
“God, Liumei, you sound like an old person.” Feng scrunched his forehead at the pulsating energy radiating across the sky on his phone. “Yes, it is the Floraverse, AR mode.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look.” Feng angled his phone toward his aunt, energy still shooting up from behind the trees like a volcano. “AR is a layer on top of the real world. Augmented Reality.” As he turned his phone back and forth in front of Liumei it revealed different parts of the hidden landscape all around her. “Now look at this,” Feng said, swiping to another window to reveal his ’Versona, hard at work at Clan:LESS HQ. “This is the Spirit World. It’s not tied to any real-world locations. Total Virtual Reality. VR. Only real gamers get into this one.”
“So which one is the Floraverse?”
“Both. You start in AR and then progress to the Spirit World, but they’re both within the Floraverse. You take your skin and money and experience points from AR into the Spirit World.” Feng opened a chat window on his phone. He began typing a message to the other members of Clan:LESS but soon thought better of it, given what Liumei had just said about getting into trouble online. His clanmates were hardcore. His aunt wouldn’t understand.
“So which came first?”
“The AR came first.” Feng shifted. Suddenly his face lit up and he spoke more quickly. “To be honest, I don’t know how adults can stand life without an AR layer on top. It’s so boring without it.”
“You sound like an addict.”
Feng betrayed no hint that he knew what she meant.
“What’s the point of the game?” she asked.
Feng paused. “What’s the point of life?”
At this his aunt smirked. “To live to the fullest. To celebrate and work and meet wonderful people and love and laugh.”
Feng blinked slowly at Liumei before resuming his rapid speech. “Anyway, the AR world is like a filter to make yourself look better, or whatever, and make the world around you more fun. But VR is where the missions and clans and a never-ending universe of possibilities takes place.”
Feng tried to stop there, to remain silent, but he couldn’t. His passion for the subject overtook him. “The ’Verse started as open-source. Hackers built it ages ago after the governments took over social media. Way back, during the pandemics.”
“Hey! That wasn’t that long ago. The pandemics are the reason I studied medicine.”
Feng sighed. “Anyways, after all that super-ancient history”—he paused to let his gentle insult land—“hackers built an AR platform that no one could take over.”
“Everything got so fragmented back then.” Feng’s aunt shook her head. “I can see why they wanted a new platform. Pretty smart.”
Feng shrugged. “What’s smart is they distributed it all across a blockchain. No central servers, no central authority.” He grinned. “In the Floraverse, reality is a blockchain.”
“ ‘Reality is a blockchain.’ Sounds deep. And why are you so pumped about that?”
“It means everyone who uses it has a piece of the Floraverse on our devices. We all constantly validate the presence of others through our own presence. Basically, we all create our reality together.” Feng’s face took on the smug look of a student completely schooling his teacher. His aunt didn’t seem to mind.
Silence again, though this was more comfortable than the one they’d ridden through earlier.
“So is this why the neighborhood committee came after you? I can’t imagine the party is too thrilled that you’re consorting with a bunch of Westerners on an encrypted platform they can’t monitor.”
“Sort of.”
“I bet.” Feng could feel his aunt studying him. She spoke again. “How about this clan you’re in? You met them in the VR Spirit World?”
“Stop calling it that. Again, you sound ancient. It’s just the Spirit World.” Feng actually sank into his seat at the sound of his aunt’s un-coolness. “But yeah, I met them there. It’s a big deal. They’re famous—really good gamers.” Feng deliberately tried to cast his clanmates in the best possible light. “You have to work your way up to the Spirit World, right? When you first start, it takes forever to get there. Someone destroyed me in the ’Verse about a year ago. After that, even as a good player, I only got back to the Spirit World a few weeks ago. It took so much work.”
“I remember how frustrated I’d get when your mom would turn off my game and I’d lose my progress when I hadn’t saved my Xbox for a few hours. So frustrating,” his aunt added.
“Yeah, so imagine losing six months or a year’s progress.”
“Wow, I missed a lot while I was in med school and building a career. Here I thought AR was just for surgery assists, and you’re telling me it’s actually a path to the Spirit World. Nirvana!”
Feng couldn’t help but smirk at his aunt’s sarcasm. “Anyway, imagine all the graphics and data and history being blasted back and forth from user to user constantly chunked, processed, and added to the blockchain. It takes an awesome amount of computing power.”
“Is that why you wear that clunky thing on your wrist?” His aunt smiled.
“Shut up. You wear one too, just like everyone else.” Feng pointed to the smartwatch on her wrist for effect.
“But I don’t use it to feel better about myself,” she replied.
“That’s a lie. Everyone uses their phone to feel better about themselves.”
Feng’s aunt steered the SUV into a gravel driveway. “Alright, here we are.”
Feng got out of the car, stretched, and, following Liumei, dragged his roller-bag into the nondescript side-by-side the Rez provided to medical staff.
CHAPTER 16
The next day, Bugz watched a new student walk into her homeroom just before the morning bell. He sat at a desk next to hers, looking serious. She spotted some calligraphy sketched onto his binder with a Sharpie.
The newcomer turned to Bugz and introduced himself through his automatic translator: “Hello, I’m Feng.”
“Ni hao,” she blurted out. Bugz felt embarrassed when Feng gave her a puzzled look. “Sorry. I don’t know if you’re speaking Mandarin. It’s just something I learned online.”
“No. It’s cool. I’m just surprised. I didn’t think anyone here would know any Mandarin…other than what the phone translates for you.”
Feng smiled. “What’s your name?” he asked, blushing as he spoke.
“Bagonegiizhigok Holiday.” She forced a smile, feeling hot and self-conscious with the effort. This guy’s pretending not to recognize me from the ’Verse, she thought. She could feel his gaze, like he was checking her out. God, I hope I look okay.
“So, you’re new here?” Bugz cringed as the words left her mouth.
“Yeah, this is my first day.” Feng stated what they both knew. His face turned serious, as though straining to think of a way to keep the conversation going.
“I—”
“D—”
They spoke simultaneously, cutting each other off. They both stopped after a syllable and apologized nervously.
“I’m sorry, you go.”
“No, I wasn’t going to say anything.”
Bugz sighed and caressed her phone, a nervous habit. “So,” Bugz began anew. “Where you staying in town?”
“Town? I moved to the Rez.”
“Really?”
“What, a guy from China can’t live on the Rez?”
Bugz giggled and looked down.
“Guess it’s my turn to be offended.” Feng smirked.
Bugz could feel Feng smiling at her and forced herself to look back up at him. As their gazes met, she felt like she looked more deeply into his eyes than she’d ever looked into anyone’s eyes before—at least not without a screen in between them. She thought about the curved light reflecting back at her from his irises. For a moment, she felt so calm—her heart beat half a dozen times before her anxiety returned and the shyness enveloped her again.
“Guess we’re both triggered then,” she said, her cheeks turning red.
“Triggered,” Feng repeated.