by Callie Hart
A shot of surprise races down my spine, between my shoulder blades. A chaser of anger follows right after it. “You promised you wouldn’t talk about that again.” I take another of his chess pieces, stabbing at the screen.
Raphael shrugs, running his index finger around the rim of his wine glass. “I did. I’m sorry to bring it up now, but I’m sure you must be curious.”
I was curious. I hate even thinking about that day, though. The mere mention of it makes me break out in hives, makes me feel panicked and sick inside my own skin for days, so I haven’t allowed myself the luxury of further curiosity. It would only have led me to dark places. I clear my throat, looking down at the table. “Just tell me.”
“When someone goes to the hospital for a work up after a sexual assault, records are made. Those records stay on file forever.”
It feels like a knife is twisting deep in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t know Mom went to the hospital. She never told me. But then again, why would she? She’s been lecturing me about spending any significant time with men for years, but she’s never brought up what happened to her. It’s hung there between us, alluded to, a black fog that descends on us whenever she feels as if I’m being reckless, but never directly spoken about. And I was just a child back then. She probably didn’t want to scare me any more than I already had been.
I barely even notice Denny return once again with our main courses—the most perfect looking, perfect smelling steak I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Denny sets a razor sharp knife down next to my plate, and I find myself staring at it. In my head, I imagine picking it up and plunging it directly in Raphael’s knee. I can’t believe he did that. I just can’t fucking believe it. “So. You’ve been…researching me? My entire family?” I demand.
“I’ve merely taken note of the information already out there in the world,” he says. There’s an edge to his voice, like he knows how badly this conversation could go any second. “Your Instagram account’s public. So is your Facebook account. Your academic history is a matter of public record, too. Admittedly, hospital records aren’t just floating around in the ether. I did take liberties where they are concerned.”
What the hell? I don’t know what I should be feeling right now. Outraged that he’s been stalking my social media accounts? Flattered that he’s taken such an interest? Creeped out, or a little thrilled that he’d care enough to look? My initial response is to lean toward creeped out.
“You shouldn’t have done that. You could have asked me anything. I would have told you.”
Raphael has the common courtesy to look a little chastened. “Would you? Perhaps you’re right. I’m sorry. I have a very quiet existence here. I find it hard to invite people into my life without doing a little background search on them first. I need to know that they’re genuine. Not likely to sell information about me to the press.” He says this last sentence as if he knows all too well I was considering doing just that the day Thalia gave me his profile. “I’m very protective of this space. It’s been my haven for a long time now. I don’t like entertaining the possibility that someone may come here and jeopardize that.”
I can kind of understand where he’s coming from, but at the same time I feel like my privacy has been violated.
“Think about this before you decide that you hate me, Beth. If you want to know something about me, all you have to do is go on Google and there you have it. Everything about me from my eye color to my shoe size to my favorite color. My relationships. My successes, my mistakes, my glories and my fuck-ups. You know everything about me, because you’ve read all about me online. The accident, for example. You know all about that, don’t you? You read the police reports in the news. You stared at pictures of my written-off car. You checked out the images of me being arrested, then being driven off in the back of a police cruiser. You’ve seen my mug shots, maybe studied the look of horror on my face as you drank your morning coffee. True?”
Ah. Shit. I cast my eyes down at the steak on my plate. My appetite has evaporated into thin air, leaving behind it a hollow, empty sensation in the pit of my stomach. “Yes. That’s true.”
“I’m not saying any of that justifies the fact that I looked you up. But…maybe it’ll give you some context.”
I hate to admit it. It’s almost impossible to admit it, but it sure as hell has. I’ve been a voyeur, peering through a window into Raphael North’s life for years now. Years . He spent a couple of days doing the exact same thing to me and I just clambered up onto my high horse and started wagging my finger.
“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” he says. “I promise, I won’t look you up again. From here on out, whatever I learn about you will be information you give to me yourself. Deal?”
I consider this for a moment. There are plenty of reasons why I should call this whole thing a day, but there’s something so captivating about this man. I can’t seem to walk away. Can’t seem to clear my damn head of him. He makes me mad, fills me with a righteous fury one second, and then the next I feel like I’m being swallowed by his very presence, pulled unwilling toward him like a fish on a hook. It feels… god. I can’t even decipher what he makes me feel. It’s all so bewildering. “Okay,” I say eventually. “Fine. You have yourself a deal. But seriously…no more internet stalking. For either of us.”
“Good.” Raphael pours me another glass of wine, then one for himself. “And since you’re so set on me calling you by your first name, I think, from here on out, it would be better if you called me by mine, too.”
“You want me to call you Raphael?”
He shakes his head. “It would be better if you called me Raph .”
Raph. It suits him. It’s a beautiful, savage name, just like him. We eat. We drink. We continue our game of chess, and I proceed to attack Raph across the board, showing him no mercy, knowing that Thalia is going to lose her mind. I’ve made an awkward kind of peace with the ridiculously attractive man sitting on the other side of the table, but I can’t shake my need to show him I am not weak. I am not as defenseless as he thinks. At the end of the meal, Raph moves my plate out of the way and leans toward me across the table.
“Where would you most like to travel in the world?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it in a long time.”
“Why not?”
“Because. When I began studying to become a lawyer, I knew I wasn’t going to be traveling anywhere any time soon. I put it out of my mind.”
Raph shrugs—that makes sense. “If you had to make a decision right now, though, on the spot…if you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?”
“Well, I’ve always had a thing for the Brits. I think London would be pretty amazing.”
Slowly, Raphael gets to his feet. He holds out his hand. “Let me take you there.”
“I’m sorry?”
“To London.”
“What?”
“Right now.”
A flash of heat slams into me. “I can’t just up sticks at nine p.m. and get on a plane to another country. I have classes I have to get to. I have a million assignments due.”
Raphael doesn’t react to my stressed tone. He simply extends his hand further. “Don’t worry so much,” he says softly. “How about you just trust me instead?”
“What about our game?”
Raphael glances down at the tablet still sitting on the table between us. “You’ll have me in three moves,” he says. “Take a look. You’ve already won.”
I glance down at the tablet, and I already know he’s telling the truth. I allow a small, smug smile to form on my face. Damn right I’ve won. And this time I intended it.
*
T he room Raphael leads me to is much larger than the first VR studio he took me to the other day. In fact, this room, up a flight of stairs, must be at least two thousand square feet. A thick yellow band is painted on the floor around the perimeter of the room, maybe about two feet from the walls. The walls are
painted a light, industrial grey, the floor, other than the yellow bands, painted black. There are no cables hanging down from the ceiling this time. Raphael fits me with another set of VR glasses, also entirely different to the one I wore last time. The lenses on these glasses are clear, and a series of thin wires loop around the back of my head, trailing down my back. They remain unconnected to anything, though, simply hanging there.
Raphael’s face is expressionless as he organizes the VR glasses, fiddling with them, pressing a series of buttons down the right hand arm of the set. The lenses remain clear, but words flash up on them in front of me, bold and in white:
Headset Paired
“It’s okay,” Raph says. “You might see a few notifications. They’re nothing to worry about. I should have warned you, though. I’m sorry.”
I adjust the glasses on my face, taking a deep breath in through my nose. “That’s okay.”
“You’re nervous. You don’t need to be.”
“Sorry. It’s just the last time I did this…”
“I know. You thought you went blind. I promise that’s not going to happen this time.”
“You’ll forgive me if I’m not brimming over with confidence,” I fire back.
Raph stops what he’s doing and turns to face me, tilting his head to one side, biting his bottom lip gently between his teeth. “What’s this? Attitude? How refreshing.”
I’ll give him refreshing. He won’t find it refreshing when I snap my VR glasses in two and storm out of here. “Just don’t screw with me this time, North. I don’t think I can take it.”
He holds his hands up, a soft huff of laughter escaping between his lips. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Dreymon . Give me a second. The lenses are going to turn black in a second, don’t freak out. It’ll only be for a second.” He stands in front of a computer on the other side of the room, typing quickly into a computer. A number of fans located high on the walls, close to the ceiling, whir into action, blasting cold air into the room. A distinct smell begins to fill the space—something organic, dirty, fresh, with the very slightest hint of food smells mixed in. Something completely unrecognizable and alien to me. Raphael equips himself with glasses of his own, connecting the cables behind his own head, allowing them to trail down his back. Holding some kind of remote in his hand, he hits a key on the computer keyboard, and the lenses of my glasses gradually begin to fade until they’re completely black. Another notification pops up in my vision, again bold and white:
COMMENCING PROGRAM
LONDON BRIDGE
14%
The percentage at the bottom of the notification quickly spirals upwards, twenty-eight percent, thirty-nine, fifty-one, sixty-seven, eight-one percent. At ninety-one percent, Raphael North takes my hand. For approximately seven seconds, I am standing in darkness, holding hands with the most intriguing, sexy, fucking frightening man I’ve ever met.
And then…
There is light.
I’m looking up at Raphael, and my breath catches in my throat. “How are you…how are you so…perfect ?” I whisper.
Raphael’s amusement makes itself know in the slight twitching of his cheek. “Perfect?”
“Yes. You’re not…I thought you’d be some kind of avatar or something. But…it’s as if I’m looking right at you. At you . Not some computer generated image.”
He nods. “Old VR systems map a persons features. They map their height, their weight, the width of their shoulders. But this system’s different. It uses a series of cameras placed around the room, as well as tiny cameras located in your glasses, to compose an identical version of me. Every slight movement I make, every facial expression, every breath I take, every step. It’s all faithfully replicated and delivered into your VR feed in real time.”
“There’s no lag?”
“There is. The transfer of information takes time, of course. But the system we’ve developed for North Industries is so fast, the human mind doesn’t comprehend it.”
I’m blown away. I can’t even begin to imagine how long it’s taken to develop technology like this. I take a look to my left and a wave of vertigo hits me right in the gut. I’m looking over the side of a bridge, spanning a river, muddy and murky. The drop is minimal but so unexpected that my knees buckle a little from beneath me.
“Holy…fucking…shit !” I cannot believe what I’m seeing right now. Can not believe it. It’s not only Raphael that appears completely lifelike in this experience. The sky, the lazily flowing water below us, the people passing us by on the old, wide bridge. All of it, down to the tiniest detail, looks and feels so real. I say feels real, because I can feel the slight breeze gusting against my face, see it blow and tug at the hair of the passersby as they hurry on down the street. English accents fill the air as people chat with one another and talk into cell phones. A blast of cold air hits me as the clouds briefly travel in front of the sun overhead in the sky.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I hiss. “How? How did you do all of this?”
He shrugs. “It wasn’t just me. About a hundred people have all worked tirelessly together to build these worlds. It’s taken a long time. A lot of blood, sweat and tears.”
“The gaming community is gonna lose its freaking mind.”
Raphael looks down at the ground, ruefully grinning. “The gaming community will lose their minds, yes. But that’s not why we created the program. We created to help surgeons train originally. Hours logged in OR rooms are vitally important to residents. Vitally important to the learning process. But the thing about learning is that accidents do happen. Mistakes are made, and lives are lost. With this program, a surgeon can spend limitless hours training in a very real environment. They can complete limitless surgeries, with thousands of possible outcomes. They can make the mistakes they need to make in order to learn, but no one gets hurt.
“We also designed the program with people suffering from disabilities in mind. People born with degenerative disorders or involved in accidents, unable to walk or move around for one reason or another, can in here. In here, they get to experience what it’s like to be able-bodied.”
The lump in my throat is the size of a golf ball. For a second, it’s hard to breathe around. “Why?” I ask. “Why do you do this? Every single technology you develop is geared toward the medical field. It’s all geared to helping people, in one way or another.”
I think I’ve asked the wrong question. Raphael swallows, his neck muscles even working overtime here, in this rendered, digital world. “Is there something wrong with wanting to help people?” he asks, his shoulders tight and tense.
“Not at all. It’s just…I guess it’s all very unexpected. Most people in your position are investing their money in exciting business ventures. I can see how something like this would make millions when used in certain ways, but medically? I don’t know how that would be a viable source of revenue.”
“It hasn’t been designed as a source of revenue,” Raphael says. “It’s been designed as a teaching tool, and an escape.”
“So all the money you’ve poured into this…?”
“Will unlikely be recouped at some point in this instance. But the money was spent freely. I went into this knowing there was a chance I wouldn’t get it back. If you make your peace with a potential loss outcome in the very beginning of a project, the actual loss, when it arrives, is much easier to bear.”
So…he went into this, knowing he would probably never make his money back? What the fuck? I’m hardly an expert on tech development, but I know this must have cost millions and millions of dollars to create, develop and put into production. Tens of millions of dollars. The amount of money Raphael was willing to kiss goodbye on this project is unimaginable to me.
“Would you like to take a walk? Explore a little?” he asks. He applies a faint pressure to my hand, reminding me that he’s still holding it. He’s probably worried about me walking into a wall or something.
“I’d like that,” I tell him. Even if I
do end up walking into the walls, this is an experience I simply can’t pass up. This looks, feels, sounds and smells like another place entirely. The program is seamless. So convincing that I have to remind myself it’s all just a display on my glasses, fooling my mind into believing I’m standing in another city, in the middle of the damn day.
Raphael takes a right and heads toward the other end of the bridge, observing our surroundings as intently as I do. Makes me wonder if he’s been here before, in this simulation. As we reach the end of the bridge, I notice a fine grid pattern overlaying the road ahead.
“The boundary of the room,” Raphael tells me. “Put out your hand and you’ll feel the wall.” So much for my he’s-holding-my-hand-to-make-sure-I-don’t-give-myself-a-black-eye theory, then. He doesn’t even release me as I reach out with my left hand, and my palm meets with cool plaster.
“If we want to head down that way, all you need to do is hold your hand out like this and clench your fist,” he informs me, demonstrating. “Then turn to your left or right and open your hand. It’ll basically drag and drop the landscape until it’s placed in a position where you can proceed forward.” He opens his hand and the whole world around us shifts—very disorienting for a second, but then completely normal again once the graphics settle back into place. The view that was right in front of us now stretches out to the left.