by Rachel Cohn
“No.”
Cool. Trust established.
“So why are you putting on eyeliner?” Very asked.
“Want to find out?”
She jumped back up from Bryan’s bed. “Yup.” Very pulled one of Bryan’s light jackets, the geeky newspaper delivery boy jacket that she used to love, from his closet to go out with Jean-Wayne.
She’d work the laptop situation later. The eyeliner mystery beckoned first.
See, Very could walk away from her so-called problem anytime. She just had.
Jean-Wayne placed a pair of sunglasses over his eyes, and together they headed out. “I was going to come find you now anyway. Something special has been arranged for you, by my secret society.” His tone sounded ominous, and what with him dropping the words “secret society,” and his green eyeliner, sunglasses, and overall great fashion sense, Very imagined him to be taking her to a Skull and Bones–type tribunal, but like one of the Ray-Banned Leprechauns, as fashioned by Calvin Klein.
It was 2 a.m. as they walked toward the East Asian Library, on the kind of April night Very loved, drizzly and brisk, with the promise of a dewy, warm morning ahead. Straggles of students milled along College Walk and on the steps at Alma Mater, but the campus was empty of its hordes of daytime people. Very loved this serene time on campus, seeing the stately university buildings framed in nightlights, hearing the hum of buses and taxis going up and down Broadway nearby, with only shadow figures dotting the landscape, smoking and talking and passing beers in brown bags. This must be the cozy campus fantasy her mother had wanted for her.
“You need it badly,” Jean-Wayne said to Very as they walked up the steps toward the library.
“Excuse me?” she asked, mildly insulted. Her slutty reputation aside, his comment seemed a crude suggestion from such a gentleman.
“Not that,” Jean-Wayne said.
“Because I can get that if I want it,” she said.
“No one would dispute that. I mean, you need a fix. I can see it in your eyes. They’ve gone all hollow since you were turned off. It’s hurting me, that empty look of yours since your goods were taken away.”
Could it be that Jean-Wayne understood her predicament? And knew that appeasement was obviously a big fat fake that needed to end?
Very said, “So you’re going to help me? Give me back my machine?”
“No. I don’t know where Bryan put it, to be honest. But I am taking you to a special place for a fix. Think of it as like a flophouse, for people like us.”
“What do you mean, ‘people like us’?”
“People who need uninterrupted, nonjudgmental tech time.”
She was people like Jean-Wayne, indeed.
There were more messages awaiting her from El Virus. Very knew it. Her great love never sent only one message; he always sent one starter followed by a blitz of many. But she’d need unlimited, unsupervised online access in order to find the messages. She didn’t want to beg for it. But here Jean-Wayne was, her newest bestest friend ever, intuiting her need, prepared to give her what she craved, with seemingly no strings attached.
“Outsiders are forbidden here,” Jean-Wayne said as they approached a side door to the library. They entered a long, narrow hallway that was dimly lit. Jean-Wayne tapped twice on a janitor’s closet door, then kicked it. The door opened to a dark staircase leading downward. Jean-Wayne retrieved a flashlight from his coat pocket and ushered Very down the stairs. They had reached the peeling wall, against which Jean-Wayne placed his index finger for scanning. As the unseen machine processed his fingerprint, Jean-Wayne told Very, “The group has made an exception for you. You’re sort of like a rogue hero to them. Guys here, on the inside, they feel for your situation. Want to help you out.”
They entered the dark room. Very couldn’t believe what she saw. The sheer green of it all overwhelmed the space. The walls were painted a bluish green, and ceiling track lights emitted soft pastel shades of green. A massive plasma screen dwarfed the room, with the oceanic game on majestic display. The background sea green color against which the game was set was so vibrant and mesmerizing that Very could see how playing the game could be like smoking crack—instant narcotic, instant addiction. It was like you looked at that screen and were immediately transported down under to a private deep-sea adventure, surrounded by lush plant life and schools of tropical fish, each player an eco-warrior up against fish, whales, sharks, pirate ships, coral reefs, tsunamis, icebergs—all the waves of ocean life from around the world. The noises emanating from the game—waves crashing, water lapping, dolphins squealing, boat engines churning—somehow all these even sounded green, if it was possible to apply a color to a sound.
“You play Dream with the Fishes!” Very said to Jean-Wayne, dazzled. “How did I not know this about you before?”
“What happens in Dreams stays in Dreams,” Jean-Wayne said. He took off his sunglasses and guided her around to the front side of the chairs to introduce her to the assembled players. There were seven other dudes already assembled, all with tribal forms of green stripes splashed across their faces. They were already deep inside the game—their eyes had that glassy look Very knew so well—but they acknowledged her presence with nods and grunts.
Very recognized a few of the grunts from their profiles on the now-defunct Grid site. Yes, defunct. But who de-functing cared? Not Very, that was certain. What Grid?
Bryan, at the “encouragement” of Dean Dean and Dreabbie, had announced he’d shut down The Grid immediately after the intervention, but who’d even notice? A replacement site of one sort or another would undoubtedly pop up soon, if it hadn’t already. It wasn’t like people weren’t already connected by a million other sites, anyway. It wasn’t like Very couldn’t put up another site like that, whenever she wanted to, and next time without stupid Bryan knowing all the passwords and programming code.
She could shrug off The Grid as easily as she’d shrugged off Bryan. No problem.
Of the Dreams players assembled, two were boys Very was pretty sure she’d made out with at freshman orientation so many months ago, or maybe she’d asked them to make out with each other at that first party she’d thrown—not entirely a clear memory so many kegs ago. One player she recognized as her definitely post–b-day party make-out partner formerly known as Ghana, and she was clear on that memory (nice), and one player she recognized as a fellow Canadian friend of J.-W.’s (they traveled in packs, those Canucks on campus). The remaining players Very recognized from around campus but didn’t know—but she’d like to, she could tell already.
Jean-Wayne said to the group, “Everyone, this is Very. Very, everyone.”
Aargh! she wanted to say, pirate-voice, to the boys in their captain’s chairs. Instead, she said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” they mumbled back.
“So do I get to play Dreams also?” Very asked Jean-Wayne.
“No way. There’s a whole initiation ritual you’d have to go through. And sorry to be all sexist pig on you, but girls suck at this game. Total downer. But see that empty chair over there? Hector the Janitor delivered it here for you. Big fan of yours, apparently. There’s a laptop on the chair, donated for your personal use in this room. Obviously, all necessary hardware and software are on the machine already. So go to it. Return to the mother ship.”
Jean-Wayne sat himself down in the empty chair in the middle of the group—he was clearly the team leader—and picked up his console to enter the game. And instantly, he was Inside, and Very knew she was on her own here. The boys had their feed, and she should step aside to go to hers.
There was a moment’s hesitation—perhaps she’d been better off restricted from all this? But the moment was only that: a moment.
Of course she wanted to hit the juice. She stepped out of the boys’ game vision and over to her queen’s chair behind their rows. She saw the laptop, shiny and beautiful, calling to her.
She’d answer.
CHAPTER 14
28 Messages, 21 Days till Finals, 99 Prob
lems
(Actually, Quite a Bit More)
She is Ensign Bella de la Mermaid on starship USSR Galactica Titanica. She is Venezuelan for this episode, just because. (Technically, she is Venezuelexican, since the Northern South Americas’ hostile takeover of Central America back on 001, so many moons ago.) She doesn’t so much look native Venezuelan, but who cares? Her long, curly red hair is up-do’d, with soft tendrils caressing the sides of her alabaster face and sheer-pink-lipsticked mouth, and she wears a minidress Federation uniform with bitch-ass black go-go boots.
It feels good to be a Venezuelan hurtling through space.
“Mi Enseñita Sirena,” he calls her, using his best conquistador accent. He is El Capitán. Her loco virus himbo. He is the hot-headed, brilliant leader of their rogue starship, which has renounced the Federation and gone on a pirate mission to explore strange new worlds populated entirely by fairies and gnomes. Their journey has been long and arduous, and it turns out there aren’t a lot of fairy/gnome planets waiting to be discovered, and trying to outrun the Federation or Cylon or whoever-the-hell-they-are bounty hunters has gotten to be exhausting.
Luckily they have taken solace in each other and their marathon lovemaking sessions on the lido deck, closed-circuit-filmed and available for downloadable viewing to folks back on 001, who are loving the Ensign-Capitán action and who are commenting all over the ‘sphere with OMFGs and LOL;>s and ¡Muy calientes! Viewers delight in funding the starship’s maladventures at such a reasonable download cost. Premium entertainment of this caliber is recession-proof. Obvs.
Online polls rage, as polls, and rages, tend to do. Some 45 percent of viewers think El Capitán will dump his Enseñita for the first hybrid fairy/gnome species he finds to seduce, while 86 percent of males aged 12-17 have voted Ensign Mermaid “Best Boobs on a Rogue Starship,” a slap for sure to the 79 percent of females aged 18-34 who voted hard-bodied El Capitán way hotter than his Jell-O–bellied lover.
This episode is The One Where Enseñita Demands a Promotion. “To what?” El Capitán asks her as they lie sprawled on a long pool chair in a post-humpty-dance embrace, virtual sun beaming onto their glistening bodies. “You propose I promote you to, like, sergeant?” He sounds dubious.
She is not. She says, “I don’t think we have sergeants on starships. I’d like to be … second in command. Affirmative. Number Two.”
El Capitán wants to know, all commanding, “Number TWO! Dream big much? I mean, I could conceivably see you as Eighteen, or maybe Fifty-eight is more realistic, slacker. What makes you think you’ve earned that rank? Truly?”
“I’ll show you how I can earn that promotion,” she murmurs, straddling him.
Fade to black, computer malfunction, CENSORED.
Very had thrown herself deep down back into the Internet black hole and, mmmmm, yes yes yes, ahhh, mmmmm, YES, such sweet relief.
El Virus had sent her a total of twenty-eight messages. She knew they were code for something. Very just had to figure out what.
As her fingers tapped the keyboard, she savored the rush—it was almost orgasmic. This laptop Jean-Wayne had hooked her up with was a virtual love machine. It talked back to her, flirted with her, played with her, adored her. It let her check out friends’ photos and updates from around the world, it offered up visions of people doing naked tai chi, it approved when she IM’d everyone she’d ever known who could be found online at that very moment. It encouraged her to gamble her mythic fortune away in online poker. It practically applauded as she hunted the clues from El Virus.
That discarded computer clunker that Lavinia had loaned Very before this, what good was that? It had only let her type stupid papers. The typing part was helpful, obviously—Very had for once completed all her course work on time, and fairly cogently as well, without the online distraction. She hoped Dean Dean would be impressed. But still. The disconnected machine had helped her achieve no state of physical and mental satisfaction. It only got the job done.
Very rather liked this newly discovered flophouse approach to computing. As the boys Dream’d and Very surfed behind them, sharing in their green if not their screen, she liked the sense of community she felt with them, this den-sharing of an electronic vortex. Her drug of choice might have been different from the boys’, but the goal was the same. Total assimilation Inside. No resident advisor interruptions, no studying, no money worries, no Real World nonsense.
He was being a tease, though, her El Virus. He’d left her a trail of messages, but sent her on a treasure hunt she had no idea how to decode. There was his posting on a Living Simple Listserv, providing a recipe for vegan maple cookies. A status update that linked to a new, alternative Wikipedia entry he’d written about Calvin Coolidge (who, according to the new entry, was not related to Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame, nor to Canadian singer Rita Coolidge; good to get that clarified). He’d uploaded images onto Very’s different pages, picturing Amy Winehouse, photos of whom practically gave Very a hard-on of beehive-hair envy, and President Gerald Ford. He’d sent missives to her various accounts (Yahoo, Gmail, Mac, Hotmail, etc.—she had them all covered, even AOL, for quaintness’ sake), but he only sent links. One link was to a message board of heated conversation by members of the Cooperative of Dairy Heartland Farmers, and another to a Walt Whitman poem called “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” an elegy for Abraham Lincoln in which Whitman used the hermit thrush as a symbol of the American voice. And so on. The messages’ only purpose, as far as Very could deduce, was to inflict a smattering of information chaos upon her wounded soul.
Also, Very hadn’t realized El Virus was that into American presidents. Personally, she found British prime ministers more fascinating and worthy of Wikipedia time.
He’d sent no monk photos.
She was intrigued, but disappointed.
No explanation of his disappearance.
Not one query of And how are you?
Not that their relationship had ever been genuinely chatty, but it would have been nice to know he’d been thinking about her in that benign kind of way, as bigger than just a text message or .jpg. Further, he’d disappeared for a whole month. He’d gone from communicating with her electronically several times a day to not at all. He owed her an explanation. Didn’t he?
Still. The electronic hunt.
Total turn-on.
A nuclear explosion walloped across the green Dreams screen. Very looked up from her laptop daze to see that the boys’ game had resulted in a decimated Pacific atoll, mercifully unpopulated, except by the schools of fried fish. Now she was hungry.
“Annihilation!” the voices in the chairs ahead of her cried out.
“Doritos!” she called out from behind them.
Break time. The games, and her laptop, were turned to Standby as a green trunk on a side wall was opened by Ghana. Inside, a treasure trove of munchies awaited consumption: Doritos and Twinkies and the mandatory Red Bulls. Perfection. These boys really knew how to party. That green trunk might as well have had a 7-Eleven logo emblazoned on it. The secret gaming room could only be improved with a green Slurpee machine.
And if she could ask her new benefactors to decode the messages from El Virus.
But El Virus was Very’s secret man. He was not to be shared even with a secret society.
Very settled for some extreme caffeination and real-boy flirt time in the meantime. That green-splashed Ghana looked mighty tasty.
CHAPTER 15
Time Is Not on My Side:
Two Weeks Left to Figure Out a Plan
Very needed more.
More El Virus.
More ether (net).
She would find and rescue her monsignor.
Now that she was back in, no way was she going back out.
She even resented sleeping time. Any time that kept her offline.
Her hunger to commune with El Virus burned deeper than ever.
And her hunger for the return of her own laptop burned even deeper than that.
Going online in Dreams world was awesome. But it was a fantasy that couldn’t be sustained. Even Very knew that.
Summer break was right around the corner. The Dreams boys would disperse, and their secret library nook would be locked up until the fall.
Perhaps it was a delayed reaction, but Very was finally, fully pissed at Bryan. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking, not going completely ballistic on him when he said he’d taken away her machine temporarily. She’d let herself believe he was doing it because he cared about her that much. She’d let herself believe, because she wanted to believe.
The laptop had been Very’s last material bond to her mother. The prior year, on Very’s eighteenth birthday, Aunt Esther had handed Very a check for two thousand dollars. The money had been held in an account awaiting Very’s passage into legal adulthood. It was money from a savings account that Cat had opened in Very’s name when Very was a child. Cat had always been broke, but somehow, over the years, unbeknownst to Very, her mother had managed to tuck away twenty or fifty or seventy-five dollars at a time that she’d earned in various waitressing gigs, intending the funds to provide for her daughter’s college education.
The couple thousand dollars would not begin to cover Very’s university costs. But it was her mother’s last legacy to her. Aunt Esther had suggested Very use the funds to buy herself a new laptop that Very could use when she went away to college. They’d both agreed Cat would have been pleased with that plan.
The laptop had been her proudest possession as an incoming freshman at Columbia University. She’d used that laptop for her schoolwork, her socializing—for everything. She’d used it to program The Grid. But now The Grid had been dismantled, and the foursome of friends hardly hung out together at all anymore.
Very realized she didn’t even know what Bryan’s plans were for the summer. Had his hope for an internship at a tech company in Portland worked out? Or would he spend another summer sweeping up his mother’s yoga studio? Would any of the sexual confidence she hoped she’d imparted to him do him any good with the ladies back home in Oregon?