by Jason Segel
“Don’t call me beautiful,” Busara snaps, but she’s in. I can tell.
* * *
—
We stayed in New Mexico less than a day. Now we’re headed back to New Jersey. I can’t decide whether this is a good idea—or the worst thing we could do. I suppose the Company won’t be expecting us to return so soon. Or will they?
Each of us will take eight-hour shifts at the wheel. If we drive through the night, we’ll be at Milo’s house in thirty-two hours. Busara took the first shift, and we’re already somewhere in Kansas. I should probably be sleeping. I drew a night shift. But I can’t take my eyes off the landscape outside the windows. Tall green wheat lines both sides of the road. It changes color as the wind pushes it in different directions. We still have most of the money the Phantom gave us. We don’t need to worry about gas anymore. But I can’t stop thinking about what might happen if the car broke down. At least in Texas you could see what was coming. Anything could be hiding out here in the fields, waiting to spring on us. I’ll take the desert any day.
* * *
—
I feel the car slow to a stop. After thirty-two hours of almost perpetual motion, it’s a strange enough sensation to wake me up.
“This is it?” Kat asks, studying the car’s GPS. “It’s not showing up on the map. It’s like it doesn’t even exist.”
Elvis is in the passenger’s seat. “Yep,” he says. “This is it. Sunset Heights.”
Two brick pillars stand on either side of a small paved road. A wooden sign spans the gap between them, forming an arch over the entrance to a private community. A blazing orange sun descends behind purple mountains. SUNSET HEIGHTS is written in fancy yellow script at the bottom.
“Yeah, but there have to be a million places with the same name,” Kat says.
“I’m sure there are,” Elvis says. “I’m also sure that the others would show up on our maps. This is the Sunset Heights where Milo Yolkin lived.”
Kat steers the car into the drive, and we enter Milo’s secret realm. Both sides of the street are lined with houses of modest size. There seem to be only four or five styles of home and four or five shades of paint. The lawns are perfectly tended—they’re all the exact same color of green. Parked in every sixth driveway is a pickup truck, with a landscaping crew nearby pruning hedges or weeding the flower beds. After a while, I start to worry that we’re seeing the same guys over and over again. It’s disorienting, like we’re stuck in some kind of loop.
“There are no street numbers that I can see. Not even on the mailboxes,” Busara points out. “How are we ever going to find this place?”
“Look for the television crews,” Elvis says.
“Why would one of the richest men in the world live somewhere like this?” I ask. “I’ve seen retirement villages with more personality.”
“Maybe Milo had other priorities,” Elvis replies. “Not everyone cares about fancy houses and home décor.”
“I don’t think this is about Milo’s taste in architecture. I think this is camouflage,” Kat says. “It was Milo’s way of blending in.”
“Yeah, if you think about it, it’s a pretty good security system,” Busara adds. “It’s a private community with no street signs or address numbers. And it doesn’t show up on any maps. If anyone ever came looking for Milo, they’d end up driving around for days.”
I’m pretty sure they’re right. I’m suddenly struck by the genius of it, and I start to wonder if Elvis might be onto something. There’s got to be more to Milo’s strange suburban world than meets the eye.
Then we round a corner and nearly rear-end a television van that’s parked at least three feet from the curb. Just as Elvis predicted, we’ve found Milo’s house. The curtains are drawn and the lawn appears to be a few weeks overgrown. Weeds have conquered the landscaping and the grass is shin-high. Knowing New Jersey, I’m sure there are ticks stationed on every blade. But that hasn’t stopped several reporters from wading through the vegetation and up to the house. One is attempting to peer through the windows.
Kat pulls over up the street. As we walk back toward the house, we pass a reporter sitting on a folding chair, applying a fresh mask of makeup.
“This is such a joke. What do you want to bet the little bastard’s in Bali?” she asks the cameraman, who’s eating a cruller as he waits for her to get ready for her close-up.
“Neighbors say he’s inside,” the guy responds, sending little flecks of pastry sailing through the air.
“If he’s inside, he’s gotta be dead. No one’s seen him in days. There haven’t even been any deliveries. I bet he slipped in the bathtub and broke his neck.”
“Even better,” says the cameraman. “Milo Yolkin dead in a bathtub is the story of the year.”
If only they knew how Milo really died. That would be the story of the century.
“Speaking of bathrooms—did you hear about that guy in the city? The one they found dead in the stall at Bryant Park? He was some kind of bigwig—”
The cameraman’s phone beeps. He checks it and immediately chucks the rest of his cruller into the gutter. “Save your story for later,” he tells the reporter. “They want you on in five.”
Closer to the house, a boy on a bike is watching the action from the sidewalk across the street. He’s about thirteen, I’d guess. His shaggy black hair needs a good cut. He keeps blowing his bangs out of his eyes. But after every puff, the same disgusted smirk returns to his face.
“That’s the person we need to talk to,” Elvis says.
“That kid?” Busara asks skeptically.
“Trust me, hot stuff,” Elvis tells her. “You may see a ninth-grade outcast, but I see Milo Yolkin’s best friend.”
It’s hard to argue with that logic. “Fine,” Busara huffs. “But if you call me hot stuff one more time, I’m seriously going to kick your ass.”
“Okay, gorgeous,” Elvis says.
The kid eyes us as we approach. “Get lost,” he says. “I’m supposed to call the cops if any of you parasites bothers me.”
“Parasites?” Kat asks with a friendly laugh. “Do we look like reporters to you?”
“Did I say I thought you were reporters?” the kid shoots back. “I know who you work for.”
I have a hunch that the boy thinks the Company sent us here. I guess Elvis hit that nail on the head. Not only did this kid know Milo Yolkin, he must have known him well.
“Did Magna ever give you a tour of Otherworld?” I ask.
The kid stares at me in silence. He’s been there. I can tell. And I don’t think he liked what he saw. “So what if you know about Magna. It doesn’t prove anything. I’m still not answering any questions,” he tells me.
“Milo must have sworn you to secrecy,” I say. I hear one of my friends gasp in the background. They weren’t expecting me to come right out with it.
The kid’s jaw clenches, like he’s trying to keep the truth from spilling out.
“Milo is dead,” I tell him. “That’s why we’re here.”
“Simon!” Busara whispers.
Does she have to second-guess everything? “This boy was his friend. He deserves to know.”
The kid sighs and nods stoically. “I figured Milo was dead,” he says. “He hasn’t come back in a while. Thanks for telling me. I got stuff to do.” He wheels his bike around and hops on. Whatever the stuff is, it suddenly seems pretty urgent.
“Milo gave you instructions to follow if something ever happened to him, didn’t he?” Kat asks.
The boy takes his feet off the pedals and looks up at her.
“We’re trying to save other people from ending up like him,” she says. “He may have something in his house that can help us.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” the kid whispers.
I nudge Kat. “Show him,” I t
ell her.
Kat takes her hair out of its ponytail and turns around. A wide strip of her scalp is still visible where they shaved the back of her head for the disk.
“We escaped from Otherworld. Milo didn’t,” she says.
The boy’s face crumples for a moment. Then he wipes his eyes. “I’m Kenji,” he says.
“Simon,” I tell him. “And that’s Elvis, Busara and Kat.”
“Elvis?” he sneers. A bubble of snot appears briefly in one nostril. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Elvis shrugs. “My parents are Ukrainian. It’s still a super-cool name there. Do you know how to get inside Milo’s house?” he asks, gesturing toward the building across the street. “I’m betting there’s a secret entrance.”
“Sure,” says Kenji. “But that’s not his house.”
* * *
—
It turns out that Milo owned the whole suburb, and he handpicked all his neighbors. Kenji’s family moved in five years ago, shortly after they’d been featured in a story in the New York Times. Medical bills had driven his parents into bankruptcy, and they were living out of the family SUV. One morning, there was a knock on the passenger-side window, and a lawyer handed them a deed to a new house and a check. The family’s current neighbors arrived in much the same way. Most of the people in Sunset Heights must have known that Milo was their benefactor, but none of them would have uttered a word. In return for his kindness, they acted as his personal security team. When the reporters showed up looking for Milo’s house, his neighbors directed them to the home of an elderly man who’d recently passed away.
“This is it.” Kenji leads us up a flagstone path to a beige house with no distinguishing features.
“Kenji?” There’s a woman standing on the porch of the house next door with a phone in her hands. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine, Mom,” Kenji says. “These guys are friends.”
The blinds are drawn, but the door is unlocked. Kenji merely turns the knob and lets us all inside.
The air in the house is stale and musty. We step into a living room that could belong to anyone in any town in any state in America. There’s a brown couch, an armchair and a particleboard coffee table. The only signs that Milo Yolkin might once have lived there are a giant seventy-five-inch screen mounted on the wall and a heap of video game consoles—from an Atari 2600 to the latest Steam Machine. Judging by the dust that’s accumulated on them, they haven’t been touched in ages.
“We used to play a lot,” Kenji says simply.
He takes us to the kitchen, which reeks of rotten garbage, and opens the door to the pantry. Inside, the shelves are filled with every imaginable brand of sugary cereal. Elvis grabs a box of Cap’n Crunch and rips the top open.
“What?” I hear him say. “It’s not like Milo’s going to need it.”
Busara must be giving him the evil eye, but I don’t turn around for a look. Kenji has pushed back a box of Cocoa Puffs, revealing a palm scanner. We’re about to enter Milo’s secret lair. He places his hand on the screen, but nothing happens. He leans forward and says, “Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?” replies a voice.
“Lettuce.”
“Lettuce who?”
“Lettuce in or we’ll break the door down.”
The pantry door slides to the right, revealing a flight of stairs. The door closes and locks behind us. I’m immediately overwhelmed by the stench of urine. It’s so powerful that I no longer smell the trash.
“Somebody went to Otherworld without wearing his Depends,” Busara remarks.
“A pair of Depends only last for a day or so,” Kenji says, leading us down the stairs. “Then it just all comes out the sides. Milo never bothered to clean his mess up. There’s a mattress down here that really needs to be tossed, but I can’t drag it out by myself.”
When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I almost forget about the smell. I’m suddenly outside, on the balcony of what appears to be a Roman villa. The sky above is a brilliant blue. Statues of two shapely and lightly clad goddesses stand guard at the doors of the building. Inside, two buff, toga-clad servants are fanning a beautiful woman. Out here, an empty daybed waits in the sun. In the fields below, workers are harvesting olives from a vast grove that surrounds the villa. I can see a sparkling blue sea in the distance. Though it’s clearly some kind of projection, it’s remarkably realistic.
“What is this place?” Elvis asks.
“Milo told me this is what Otherworld used to be like—back in the old days when it was an MMO. He said he used to feel like a god when he was here. Plus, he told me he didn’t know what else to do with all this space. He wasn’t all that great at decorating.”
No one replies. Then Kat clears her throat nervously. “It’s lovely,” she says.
“Yeah, sure,” Kenji sneers. “It’s gorgeous.”
He punches a code into a panel on the wall, and Milo’s beautiful world disappears. In its place is a dank, windowless room. The walls and ceiling are bare concrete, and the floor is decorated with stains whose origin I’d rather not contemplate. The daybed is now just a soiled mattress lying on top of a concrete base, and the corners of the room are thick with spiderwebs. There’s a bottle on the floor beside the makeshift bed. Its contents are the color of apple cider. It’s like a cell inside some Central American prison. I’m overwhelmed by a mixture of revulsion and pity. This prison cell was Milo Yolkin’s reality.
“Oh my God, is that what I think it is?” Busara asks, her eyes on the amber liquid inside the bottle.
“Looks like I missed one,” Kenji replies. “There used to be a million piss bottles down here. He’d use them when he ran out of Depends. He’d pause the game, but he didn’t like getting up to use the bathroom. He said he was working on something that would make it possible to stay there all the time—some kind of machine that would take care of his body. Replace food and Depends and plastic piss bottles.”
He’s talking about the capsules.
Busara’s eyes light up. “Are there any machines like that here?”
I know what she’s thinking. If the facility is closed and her dad is still missing, Milo must have been storing Ogubu’s body somewhere else—somewhere the Company didn’t know about. If Milo brought capsules here to Sunset Heights, there’s a chance her father might be locked up inside one of them.
I totally get it. But Busara’s excitement feels out of place and cruel. This boy lost someone he cared about too.
Kenji shrugs. “I haven’t seen any machines. Like I said, Milo hasn’t been back for a while. Maybe he finally made one. Maybe that’s where he’s been.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Kat asks gently.
“A few months ago. I found him half dead down here.” Kenji pauses. I want to ask the next question, but I know I’ll screw it up, so I let Kat take the lead. But she doesn’t say anything either. She just puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder. His head falls forward and the words come spilling out. “I was away visiting my grandparents and I couldn’t check in on him for a few days. When I got back, I came down here and found him foaming at the mouth with one of those fucking disks on the back of his head. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything the whole time I’d been gone. The doctor said a few more hours and he’d have died of dehydration.” He glances up at Kat. “Sorry for using the f-word.”
“That’s okay,” Kat says. “I can’t think of a better word to use for what you just described.”
“Hey, you guys.” Elvis has been examining the electronics hidden about the room. “I know this place is a hellhole, but this is some pretty amazing stuff Milo’s got rigged up in here. Far as I know, no one’s invented a VR environment like it yet. Is this what your buddy wanted you to destroy?” he asks Kenji.
I catch his eye and shake my head in disgust. He and Busar
a belong together. I’m not sure either of them is fully human.
Fortunately, Kenji doesn’t seem offended. If anything, I’d say he’s relieved by the change of subject. “No,” he says, setting off down the hall. “That stuff’s all back here.”
Busara rushes after the kid, still hoping she’ll find her father behind one of the doors. I’m less eager now. I’ve seen more than enough already, but I still drag myself down the hall.
I find them standing in a large room with a green-screen wall around three sides. There are cameras mounted on the ceiling and on tripods stationed around the room. A table runs along the fourth wall. Aside from the giant computer monitors hooked up to a laptop, I don’t recognize most of the equipment sitting on top.
“What’s in the other rooms?” Busara asks impatiently. “I saw a bunch of doors down the hall.”
“Nothing. They’re empty,” says Kenji.
“This is it?” Kat seems almost as crestfallen as Busara. “There are no headsets down here? Where’s yours? You said you’d been to Otherworld, and I don’t think Milo would have let you use a disk.”
“Yeah, he gave me a headset. I stuffed it down the garbage compactor,” Kenji says.
“Do you have any idea what that thing would be worth right now?” Elvis asks.
“I don’t give a shit,” Kenji snarls. “I saw what Otherworld did to Milo. You think I’d sell that poison to someone else?”
A lot of people would. Apparently Kenji is different. I can see why Milo trusted him.
“What was Milo filming down here?” I ask Kenji.
“Himself,” the boy says.
“What the hell?” I turn around to see Busara holding up a projector just like the ones we have hidden back in the car.
“Yeah, that was part of his project,” Kenji tells her.
“What project?” I ask.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Elvis says, looking at me as if I’m mentally challenged. “The green screen, the cameras, the hologram projector. Milo was making a digital clone of himself.”
