by Vic Connor
Svetlana walked around me to stand in front of my wheelchair. She’d tied her black blouse into a knot just under her bra, leaving her flat stomach bare. My eyes were at the level of her belly button, which was pierced with a golden bananabell. She raised a hand over my head. “Stand up and walk, Jake!”
I threw my head back and stared up at her. “What do you mean, stand up?”
She pushed off lightly from the floor and floated up, laughing. “I mean it. You can stand up now.” Her knees hovered at my eye level, and to my complete embarrassment, I discovered she was wearing a short skirt.
Damn Russians. All my blood rushed into my face while I avoided looking at her bare legs.
“It’s gravity-free now. See?” She somersaulted backwards through the air, pushed herself back down from the top of the capsule, and returned to the floor, smiling. “Stand up, Jake!”
“Hey…” I was feeling a little harassed. I wanted to ask her to stop flustering me with her little touches, her whispers, and the random displays of her flesh. After all, I’d come here to earn money. Not to—
Grabbing me by the shoulders, she started tugging me up, and the protest died in my throat.
Because I stood up.
Well, I rather floated out of my chair, and Sveta grabbed my hands and guided me upward, so I remained vertical. My useless legs dangled underneath me.
“See?” she said.
For the first time, I felt like returning her smile.
Sveta pushed my chair out of the vat and connected the pipes sticking out of my suit to the relevant chutes inside the capsule. When I was hooked in, the vat’s walls lowered back down to the floor, trapping the two of us inside the giant glass jar. My heart started beating faster.
“Do you know what’s next, Jake?”
I nodded. “Yeah. We did a trial at the NozHealth clinic in L.A., when I signed up for this. Not a nice memory, I have to say.”
She patted my shoulder reassuringly. “Relax.”
I wiggled the upper part of my body, getting used to seeing another person from a perspective I had all but forgotten after three years in the wheelchair: eye to eye. This vertical floating position felt stable, and my initial fear of falling helplessly to the floor passed.
She locked her unusual, emerald-green eyes on me. “Ready?”
“As ready as I’m ever gonna be.”
A thick mist formed around us—some sort of nanobot cloud, according to what the NozHealth techs had told me when I underwent the first trial, that was part of the secret sauce for linking mind and body with hardware and software.
“Relax, Jake,” Sveta repeated. “Breathe.”
I realized I was holding my breath. I emptied my lungs…
…inhaled deeply…
“Five,” the booming male voice announced.
I felt a tingling behind my eyes, like when you dive into a swimming pool with too much chlorine in the water.
“Four…”
Sveta’s green eyes drilled into mine. Her body and even her face became blurry, and only those bright, intense eyes remained.
“Three…”
The sounds of the forest intensified around me. What felt like a fly crawled across my forehead and buzzed away.
“Two…”
I reached out to where I expected Sveta’s hand to be and found only air. A gust of wind ruffled my hair. Her floating eyes narrowed at me, gleaming with sharp, diamond-like glitter.
The words jumbled around my tongue.
“One.”
2
Power Suit
The whirling darkness seemed to be made of muffled screams and throbbing lights. Half-heard conversations in languages I didn’t understand. A lake—a small one, barely larger than a pond, with a surface like a polished mirror—reflected the surrounding mountains and the white clouds above so perfectly, I felt like I was hanging upside down, about to fall into the sky.
Then utter, complete darkness.
Darkness, and silence.
The inky stillness was broken by a soft whisper—barely audible, repeating three words.
Three words I knew.
Louder.
“Wake up, Jake,” said the whisper, louder and louder. “Wake up, Jake.”
It was a voice I’d heard not long ago.
Slight Russian accent.
“Wake up, lazy Jake,” Sveta said. “Come on; I can see your alpha waves are alright, so I know you’re awake.”
I blinked, forcing the darkness back. But I shut my eyes tight again as the piercing light blinded me.
“Ah, there you are!” she said.
“Lights!” I groaned. “Too bright!”
“Oh! Sorry, Jake. My bad! I’ll set them to a faint twilight.”
Hesitantly, I opened my eyes.
Faint twilight, indeed; I could barely make out her shape, sitting in front of me across some large surface, flat as a still pond.
“Slow, gentle sunrise,” she said.
As my eyes adjusted, the lights gradually got brighter.
We were in a boardroom dominated by a huge, wooden table—smooth and polished to a spit—with half a dozen chairs on each side. All around us, glass walls looked out to an endless blue sky with no clouds in sight. I could see nothing above or below as though we were on a transparent airplane.
The room had no doors, as far as I could tell.
It was just the two of us in the boardroom, Sveta seated directly in front of me. She wore a white silk blouse, the kind a corporate secretary would wear while informing a self-important CEO of their scheduled meetings for the day. She had emphasized the look with black, thick-rimmed glasses matching her dark hair, which she had tied in a loose beehive bun.
With her thumb and index finger, she pulled her glasses to the tip of her nose and gave me a wink over the wide rim. “How do you feel?”
“Confused.”
She nodded. “This is normal.”
“Are we…?”
“We are, boss!” She beamed. “Welcome to the Lobby, and congratulations on successfully completing the first mind-merging phase.” She opened her arms as if to embrace the whole room. “Take as long as you need to gather your bearings; I wasn’t joking about confusion being the first thing you should expect to feel.”
Her corporate outfit complemented mine. If she was cosplaying a secretary, then my role seemed to be the all-powerful CEO. My suit seemed to be made of some lush, self-cleaning nanofabric, in a radioactive hue of bright blue I was sure would glow in the dark. I could probably sleep in this suit for a week and not find a wrinkle on its expensive surface. A broad silk tie, also made of smart nanofabric, decorated my neck, and an impeccable white shirt completed my attire—the same white as Sveta’s blouse.
As I caressed the smooth tie with my fingertips, I noticed a considerable weight on my left forearm.
I pulled up my sleeves a little and whistled, inspecting the watch wrapped around my wrist: a Rolex Gadium. It was just like the one Aleesha gave that singer dude T-Rex when they got married and invited half of Hollywood to their wedding, and then they made such a huge fuss over who had the right to keep the watch when they divorced three weeks later. The fuss kind of made sense, though, since the thing was more expensive than Dad’s treatment. The Gadium was a power token, signaling to the world that I had reached the top and still didn’t find it enough to satiate my drive and ambitions.
Or, well … it would have told the world so, if all of this were real—like a real watch that a real me was wearing in a real boardroom.
And yet, as illusory as this digital mirage was, the Rolex felt heavy. I knew things would look authentic enough, like the table, Sveta’s outfit and my own, but I hadn’t expected them to feel so you-can-touch-this real: tactile, heavy, genuine.
“So, this is what a million bucks feels like,” I said, finally. “I could get used to it, I suppose.”
She nodded, grinning, but said nothing.
I rolled the left sleeve all the way up to
my elbow, uncovering the tattoo on the inside of my arm. It was like I was trying to pinch myself to see if I was awake or dreaming, and part of me was sure the tattoo would disappear.
But there it was: a long-beaked, green-and-blue bird hovering over a branch blossoming with red flowers.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “A colibri, yes?”
“That’s what it’s called in Spanish, yes,” I said. “It’s a hummingbird.”
“Also the name for it in Russian,” she said. “And in German, go figure.”
“You speak all those languages?”
“That’s one of the many things a good assistant has to excel at, boss.” She smirked. “What are the flowers?”
I extended my arm over the table, palm up, so she could better see the blossoming branch. “We call them bleeding hearts. Because of their shape, you see?” I traced one with a finger. “They aren’t native to California, but they grow well in the shade. And hummingbirds love them.” I rolled my sleeve back down, both to hide the tattoo and conceal the Gadium: I’ve heard such power tokens signal even more power when hinted at, rather than blatantly shown. “How did you guys upload my tattoo in here? It looks exactly as I remember it.”
“That’s literally true, boss.” She gestured around the Lobby. “Our artists have created most things here. But the small, personal details—” she pointed at my left forearm “—draw on your memory. So, this cute colibri looks exactly as you remember it, not as it is in reality.”
I examined the room. There were seven chairs at each side of the huge desk. Mine was considerably bigger that the rest: plushy, leathery, wider than my bed back home, and so cushioned and well-balanced that one could probably install it inside a NASA spaceship and fly to the moon and back without a hint of turbulence. “I could live in this chair.”
“You could,” she said. “For the next 30 days. But then, you’d lose the game, boss, and you wouldn’t be able to buy one of those expensive Gadium watches.”
That was a superb point.
I tried moving my legs, and with a tingle of disappointment discovered they were as useless as always. I grabbed the edge of the desk and swiveled my NASA version of a chairman’s seat around to check out the rest of the room. Dark wooden floors, spit-polished to shine almost like mirrors; soundproof ceiling; and even more glass walls revealing an endless blue sky.
“Where are we?”
“Logged into the Lobby,” she said. Was there a small trace of worry in her voice? “Your mind has just completed the first merging phase, remember?”
I swiveled back to face her. “No, I mean where is this boardroom supposed to be? There’s only sky out there. Are we, like, floating? Flying? And flying over what, anyway?”
She smiled, looking relieved. “We could be in any city you want, boss. Tokyo at night.” The sky outside flickered and gave way to looming skyscrapers of Shinjuku neighborhood, dressed in bright neon lights. “Or evening in Paris.” The buildings morphed into a stunning view of the sun setting behind the Eiffel Tower. “Or any other capital city, any time of the day. They copy-pasted this version of the Lobby from a chat room for NozamaTech’s top-tier executives, so if there’s a city with big corporations in it, we have it modeled. Would you prefer anything in particular?”
I thought for a second. “Do you have Mexico?”
“Certainly, boss.”
The Eiffel Tower blinked out, and in its place, a large square appeared, framed by elaborate five- or seven-story buildings that looked a few hundred years old. On the square’s left side, framed by two towers, loomed a massive, dark cathedral. A large flag hung limply from a tall flagpole, gray in the twilight. When a sudden gust of wind made the flag fly, I could make out three vertical stripes: green, white and red. An elaborate drawing decorated the center of the white stripe—an eagle, perched on a cactus, tearing a serpent between its beak and claws.
Exactly like I remembered it. “Dad brought us here, to the Zócalo, when I was eight…” The wind stopped, letting the Mexican flag drop.
“I know,” she said. Any trace of mockery and playfulness had disappeared from her voice.
“You do?”
“I’ve read your files, Jake.” For brief moment, a crack appeared in her efficient secretary façade. Intelligence flashed in her eyes, mixed with genuine empathy. Maybe, I wondered, she wasn’t here only to make me uncomfortable with her teasing.
Although teasing—and mind-reading—must have been a large part of her job description, because a moment later, her eyes lit up again with that mischievous glint. “Oh, yes, this girl knows how to read!” A sardonic smirk twisted her lips. “I’d have guessed you already knew by now. The biggest thing about me, boss…” she arched forward, chest out, her blouse’s buttons about to burst, “…would be my big brains.”
She’s toying with you, something inside me called out. Play back! “Oh,” I said. “I’m sure you have one or two big ideas in there…”
Gods. That sounded awful.
Awful and creepy and … just awful.
She gazed at me, a single eyebrow raised. “You know the workshop you asked me to book for you, but you keep postponing, boss?” she said. “The one called ‘Seven Ways to Improve your Clever Retorts,’ that you had me cancel last week, because of some scheduling conflicts? I think you should reconsider attending, sir, if you ask me.”
I wished my rocket chair would swallow me whole, but for all its soft plushiness, that damned thing didn’t comply.
She chuckled. “Aww, c’mon, Jake! You’ve lost a round; fight’s not over yet.” She leaned forward. “Practice makes perfect, right? And that’s one cool thing about games. Losing stings, but not so much as losing when it’s the real thing. So, c’mon—play, practice, get better.”
I looked at her. Again, for an instant, behind her mischievous mask, I glimpsed her smart, compassionate eyes.
“All right. I came here to play, so let’s play.” I caressed the desk’s smooth surface. The sensation was perfect. “You were saying this is a meeting room for the Big Cheese, right?”
“Big.” She nodded. “Modeled after the room where NozamaTech’s board meets, they told me. By the way.” She pointed to two seats on her far left. “I’ve heard this is where we sit.”
I frowned. “We? Who’s we?”
“The top brass of NozGames, silly!” She laughed; then, probably realizing she had broken character, she regained her alluring assistant’s mask. “Sorry, boss. I meant that’s where NozGames sits when the whole NozamaTech board convenes. You know, NozGames? Istoria developers?”
“I think these names ring a bell, yes,” I said in a grave and hopefully CEO-like tone, straightening my perfectly straight tie. If she wanted to roleplay secretary and CEO, I could just as well play along. “Would you happen to know where NozHealth sits in this room?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, sir. Should I find out?”
“Please do, Svetty dear. No reason in particular, you know. I’m just curious.”
“You know what they say about curious cats, don’t you, boss?”
“I do, my dear Svetty: They always land on their feet. Most curious animals, wouldn’t you agree?”
I was rewarded by the sound of her laugh. It felt good, I have to confess.
“Incidentally…” She stood and walked toward a small table in one corner of the room. From her waist down, a black pencil skirt encased her endless legs until just a little past the knees. The massive desk blocked my view of her feet, but by the way she walked, I knew she was wearing high heels. She bent elegantly as she reached the small table, and as interesting as the view was, it was the smell that grabbed my full attention.
Coffee.
Not just any coffee. This was, like, the richest coffee I’d ever smelled. And if there was one thing that had gotten Dad and me through the bad days, it was coffee.
She walked over to my side of the table and placed a tiny, white porcelain cup in front of me, the black surface looking absolutely p
erfect.
“I’ll need your feedback on this, boss.” She smiled as she sauntered back to her chair.
I held the little cup in my hands like a holy relic. It was hot. It smelled like a million bucks.
I took a sip.
My shoulders shivered with pleasure as a shot of warmth and energy whipped down my spine. If there’s a heaven for coffee addicts and you’ve been a faithful espresso junkie all your short, miserable life, then the steaming brew that Saint Peter welcomes you with as he opens the pearly gates will taste and smell exactly like what Sveta had just served me.
“I’ve never been able to afford the expensive joes at the fancy cafés downtown.” I peered at my reflection in the small black mirror between my hands. “But I’d bet anything this one here beats the living crap out of every single other one.”
Her smile widened. “Glad you approve, chief. Should I write a memo informing all interested parties that your impeccable sense of taste is working as well as ever, which proves the first mind merging phase is complete?”
I placed the tiny cup on its tiny plate and leaned back, hands behind my head. The Gadium’s weight was pleasant on my left wrist. “If it isn’t too much of a bother for you, my dear Svetty, please do.”
She pulled a paper notepad and a fountain pen from somewhere below the table and made a tick on a box.
I flicked my gaze upward. “Really? Pen and paper?”
“Not a fan of old school, eh?” She giggled. “I can do high tech too, boss, no worries.” She swiped the notepad aside, waved a hand and conjured a floating screen in front of her out of thin air. “I’ve read Sappegg predicts they’ll launch their first full holographic screen in about five years. Is near-future high tech enough, sir?”
I reached for the coffee and took a second sip, which sent another delicious shiver down my spine. Man, this stuff was awesome.