by N. K. Traver
“I thought that’s what you loved about it,” he says. “A change of pace, a new company to consult for every couple of years. You’ve always wanted to get out of Wisconsin.”
“And away from my mother,” Mom says. They laugh about that, which makes me stop blowing up dump trucks and watch them. Grandma is over all the time, but her surprise visits are the best. She brings candies and bosses Mom around.
“I’ll never smother you like that, Brandon,” Mom says, kissing my head and setting me onto the grass. “You’re right, Matthew. This is the perfect chance for us to start fresh. I’m going to call Dale right now and accept.”
She kisses Dad and trots back inside. Dad pulls a brand-new silver airplane, still in its box, from behind his back.
“Whoa!” I shriek, because it’s one of those ones from the commercials, the ones that actually fly and you can tell them with your voice to light up and take off and fire missiles—“Dad, cool!”
“Thought you’d like it, son,” he says as I rip the box open. “We’re going to be flying on a real one like this in a month. Up in the sky. Right next to the moon. How do you like that?”
“A real one?” I say, probably in an octave only dogs can hear, because I’m that amazed that I—Brandon—I’m going to be flying. Next to the moon. “Will it fire missiles?”
“Naw, only the Air Force gets missile planes,” he says, helping me fit the batteries into the toy’s controller. “But ours will take us to new places. You want to see new places, don’t you, Brandon?”
I wonder if I can remember that plane well enough to create it.
I lower my arm. Open my eyes.
And deck Seb—whose lips have almost touched mine—full in the cheek. He shrieks and jerks back, but I’ve got at least five days of frustration saved up and I won’t forgive him for ruining my first chance to relax. I jump on him and wrestle him into a headlock, and think again that the other hackers are crazy for giving up their bodies. There’s nothing like the feel of him struggling under my arm, the burn of my muscles tightening around his neck.
I’m enjoying the shade of purple he’s going when the cheater vanishes and floats away in disembodied laughter, then reappears against the fence on the other side. My Wisconsin house stands at my left, rectangular light ghosting through the windows onto the grass. Stars clutter the ceiling. They look endless, look real, and I forget about Seb and stare into them.
“Gosh, JENA must be riding you like a pony,” Seb says. “It’s been a week since your hot little number came up on my monitor. And you just went from like, the Hulk to that dude from The Notebook.”
“It’ll be that dude from Silence of the Lambs if you pull that crap on me again.”
“Ooh, I’d like to see that. I kind of have a thing for sociopaths.” Seb’s avatar flickers, then appears four feet away, just out of striking distance. He shifts into the bodacious blonde from the ZR1 and my fists clench tighter. “Surely you can’t hit a girl?”
“Blondes aren’t really my thing,” I say. “And I think I could make an exception.”
Seb smiles and changes again, but not to his fedora-topped Backstreet Boy. The girl’s golden tendrils darken to chocolate brown, her face softens, her too-tight dress warps into a plaid snap-up shirt and jeans. I take a sharp breath and back away.
“What about now?” Seb says, in Emma’s voice.
“That’s not funny. How do you know…?”
“Oh, I’ve been bored, so I tapped into JENA’s memory database and found a sexy little recording she had with your name on it. Don’t worry, it’s only gone viral inside the prison. I can’t access YouTube from here.”
“What?”
“I know! No Internet is really a bummer. I’m way behind on my blog.”
Seb/Emma takes a step closer. I edge away and feel that shaking coming on again.
“Change back,” I say.
“Why?”
“You’re a freaking sicko, that’s why. Change back.”
Emma’s grin widens. “You really care for her. You do, because if she was someone you fabricated or a one-night stand it wouldn’t bother you so much. Do you love her?” She appears right in front of me, peering up with amber eyes that make my chest ache. “Do you love me?”
“You? No. Her … it doesn’t matter. I have eight hours in here, we should get to work on this mirror thing.”
“But I’m having so much fun,” Emma says, trailing her fingers up my arm.
Which is way more confusing than I should let it be. I know it’s Seb, but seeing her … seeing her this close, and having anyone touch me, is like giving steak to a starving man. Seb/Emma smirks at the conflict in my eyes. I don’t move away. Not when she drapes her arms around my neck, not when she presses her fake body against mine.
She’s warm. She’s so warm, and I remember what it was like to kiss her, I remember the curve of her back under my hands.
“It doesn’t matter who you are in here, gorgeous,” she says. “Male, female, ugly, beautiful. Sometimes I wonder if I’d prefer to stay, but frankly, I hate working. I miss shopping for Pumas and I’m way behind on my Facebook stalking. Plus, I miss things like this…”
“Ugh, stop it!” I shove her away and shudder, wiping her touch off my neck and shaking it off my hand like spit. “Don’t talk to me like that, don’t impersonate Emma, and don’t touch me! You’re right, it doesn’t matter who you are in here because in reality you could be anyone else, including a fifty-year-old pedophile!”
Seb gasps. “Kathy! How could you say such a thing?”
The stars dissolve. The lawn melds to black steel. Seb shifts to his normal avatar and adjusts his hat with a glare.
“I am so not a fifty-year-old pedophile. I’m eighteen, thank you very much, and I expect an apology.”
“I’m not apologizing, you tried to seduce me wearing the skin of someone … someone I know!”
The dark metal closes us inside a box no bigger than my usual workspace, and I get really claustrophobic. Just like my first day on the job, the only light comes from slits in the walls, small Z’s of neon blue.
“Where are we now?” I ask, pulling my arms tight.
“The control server for the mirrors. And now you know as much as I do.”
“JENA won’t find us?”
Seb laughs. “Won’t find me. Won’t find you, if you say you’re sorry.”
“I’m not apologizing.”
“Five.”
“Seriously? You sound like my mom, why would I have to—”
“Four.”
“You started it, if you’d kept your hands to yourself—”
“Three.”
“There’s going to be an asterisk by this apology—”
“Two.”
“All right, I’m sorry!”
Seb grins. “Not so hard, is it? Don’t you feel better now?”
I would feel better if I could knock him into next week. I clench my teeth, push two fingers into the closest wall, and picture the darkness peeling back. Nothing happens. Maybe because I’m also picturing Seb’s face peeling back. I exhale. I don’t think about how close the walls are. I replay what I want to do over and over in my head, but the room starts spinning and the light fades and my hand slips—
Seb catches me, and this time I can’t connect my brain to my arm to shove him off. JENA must be shutting me down. I fight against it, and instead of blacking out I plunge underwater, choke on a mouthful of liquid salt, and struggle against corpse-green waves that churn like molasses. Someone drags me by the collar onto a bank of dirt-swirled sand. I blink into a shapeless sun and glance around the tiny beach, at the single palm tree on the sand bar, and finally at Seb, who looks annoyed.
“That little slut! I know what she’s doing,” he says. “JENA must think you can crack the mirrors. She’s running you low so you don’t have the energy to even think about it.”
“We’re back in the game room?”
“Yeah, my section of it, anyway. H
ere, doll.” An orange can materializes in Seb’s hand. He offers it to me. “Drink up.”
“Wired x505?” I read from the label. “It says it’s equivalent to six and a half Red Bulls.”
“Exciting, isn’t it?”
“It has a warning label.”
“Honey, it’s a simulant. You don’t have a body. It can’t kill you. And I’m sure you’ve done worse.”
That makes me smile. “Why would you assume that?”
“Oh gosh,” Seb says, raising both hands. “I’m shutting my big mouth.”
I crack open the top and take three swallows before gagging.
“Ugh, it tastes like someone pissed cough syrup into orange juice.”
Seb giggles. “Kathy, JENA did mention you’re inside a computer, yes? Digital prison? Your brain is spinning on someone’s hard drive? Turn off your taste buds if you don’t like it.”
I don’t have the energy to learn something new so I just grunt and chug the rest. I throw the can at the water when I’m done. It hits the surface and evaporates in thousands of glassy squares.
“How long does it take for this stuff to kick in?” I ask.
“Maybe five minutes? But that’s if you had a stomach. I dunno, I’ve never tried one.”
“What? How do you know it’ll even work?”
Seb smiles. “Trust me.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t. Especially considering what happened to your last partner. For all I know you’re using me as a scapegoat in case you get caught somewhere you’re not supposed to be. What’d you get arrested for, anyway? Why do you randomly add S’s to words? Why are we sitting on a beach?” I stare at the water. “I can turn off my taste buds?”
“Yup, I think it’s working. Hold on, love.”
The room morphs back to black sheet metal a thousand feet high. The light behind it pulses. I whip my head toward a wall and the darkness peels away, scattering like my eyes are lasers, and transparent screens flash up one after the other. I read about three lines of text before closing one and moving on. I’m on the twelfth screen when Seb says, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Because I definitely can’t read that fast.”
I close screen thirteen. It’s data, lots of data, on who’s used the mirrors and when. How many billions the company’s spent buying up glass corporations and infusing nanobots into mirrors everywhere from major construction to cars. How JENA has to conduct the first swap in total darkness since exposure to light corrupts a chemical the bots use to extract the primary personality. But only JENA uses the mirrors, and JENA alone. No details on how. I bring back screen four. One of the most recent swaps.
Mine.
“‘First attempt at a trade with a conscious target,’” Seb reads, his grin widening as he scans the log. “‘Note: JENA advised no-go. Duplicate initiated contact. Overseer Meng approved trade at eighteen hundred. Target romantically distracted. Highly successful, as social protocol prevented target from exiting during preparations.’ Stud muffin. Does she mean from the room, or the girl?”
“Shut up. Trying to work here.”
But there’s nothing I can use. The text ends with a few suggestions to minimize the noise the mirrors make while JENA charges them, as the nanobots need a massive amount of electric energy to exchange the duplicate and original personalities. Says after the initial swap, the light-sensitive chemical in the target’s body neutralizes, making future swaps possible in daylight. Meaning I don’t have to catch Obran in the dark. But he’s got to be close enough to a mirror to—
Seb is still laughing.
“What the hell is so funny?” I snap.
“I can’t help it. I just keep picturing … you finally scoring and getting arrested in the middle…”
I don’t care enough to correct him. I close out the computer windows and thumb at a shaft of blue light.
JENA responds to thoughts, to pictures I make in my mind. I should be able to picture a room I know has a mirror. Except not the same way I picture the Corvette or Seb’s beach or my Wisconsin house. Instead, what JENA sees. Something like the room I arrived in, with its weird reverse furniture and television mirror screen.
Obran used the mirror rooms. JENA may have controlled him, but the log said Obran initiated contact. I should be able to interact with the mirrors the same way he did.
“You were asleep when they took you?” I ask.
“Sweetie, you’re talking likes, three hundred miles a minute.”
I sigh and tap my fingers on the wall. “You. Were. Asleep. When. They. Took. You?”
“Yeah, and everyone else I’ve talked to, too. Passed out in front of my computer, woke up in a gray room.” He gives me a thoughtful look. “What was it like, swapping real time?”
“Kind of like waking up with you half an inch from my mouth.”
“Like the best day of your life?” He cackles, then goes serious. “But you woke up in the gray room, right? Or somewhere elses?”
I almost tell him. Almost, then I shut my mouth and remind myself I don’t trust him. I have to keep some secrets to myself or I’ll lose the only edge I’ve got.
Because if that’s it—
If it is—
That’s why JENA’s so freaked about my security access. That’s why she didn’t approve Obran’s swap and why she works me until my brain melts, because I saw something she didn’t want me to see.
And now I know exactly what I need to picture to create our escape route.
There’s still a problem. The second I re-create the room, Seb will see how I did it and I’ll lose my edge. I wonder if I can block his view of what I’m doing. Like Obran did with the mirrors, when I was the only one who could see him.
“Okay,” Seb says. “This expression you’re wearing right here screams psycho killer.”
“Yeah, well. Looking at you does that to my face.”
Seb snorts. “Your mother taught you absolutely no manners. We are a team whether you like it or not, and I am not putting up with this attitude.”
I turn back to the wall and focus on creating the room in a way Seb can’t see. Like he said, swapping the security tape.
I smile and think he might not be too far off on the “psycho” bit.
I open the screens again, pull up a text window, and think, Seb is a wrinkly old man. The words appear on-screen, white against blue. No reaction. About that, anyway.
“We need to work on this ignoring thing, too,” Seb says. “I’m a talker, you know? You can even just nod. It’s better than”—he gestures spastically at the screens, pulling up a hundred nonsensical windows—“this.”
I raise a brow, waiting. This feels too easy. Either I’m getting good at this, or I’m doing it wrong. Seb shifts uncomfortably.
“You do realize, nothing is happening right nows,” he says, biting a nail.
“I’m thinking.”
It is working. Seb’s looked at the insult twice with no reaction. I watch him a second longer, then recall the memory of that very first room with its shadow cabinets and lightless lamps. My bathroom materializes. Not the right way at first, because I’m used to seeing it with the toilet on the right and the palm trees on the curtain bending west. Slowly, everything flip-flops and loses color. Seb’s avatar fades. Only the glow of wire-thin cyan remains in the darkness, sketching the details of the trash can, the sink, the shower curtain. Above it all looms the mirror, black and empty except for a splat of white distortion in the corner where I punched it before. On the other side, sunlight, real sunlight, filters through an inch gap between the door and the frame. The light’s off otherwise.
This is it. Picturing the room in reverse—this is how to connect to the mirrors. But this is only how to see through them; touching it doesn’t grant reentry. I proved that already. So what does?
SPLASH. The room disappears and I choke on another mouthful of salt water. This time, no hand reaches into the molasses to get me. I claw to the surface and drag myself to shore, where Seb waits with his
arms wrapped loosely around his knees, scowling. I cough out a mouthful of bitter ocean.
“Dude, what the hell?” I say. “Why’d you pull us off the server?”
“Yeah, still can’t really understand what you’re saying in turbo speak, but a little ticked right now. Are you fooling around on me, Kathy? Because you know how I feel about breakups.”
“No, I’m trying to figure out how this all works! These little swims aren’t helping.”
Seb gives me a full scan before turning his attention toward a cluster of pink and orange clouds, where the sun has just dipped under the, um, horizon. Or floor. Or whatever you’d consider it.
“I may look like I play nice,” Seb says. “But if you’re hiding something from me”—he gives me a crooked smile—“I’ll kill you.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
I don’t want to but I move closer to him, like I’m all innocence and rainbows, and wipe my palms on my wet jeans when I sit down. I make the boots on my feet disappear and dig my toes into silk-soft sand.
“We don’t have to fight like this, you know,” Seb says, his voice suddenly female. His avatar shifts to a willowy redhead in a pale green sundress, wavy hair cascading to her waist. “We’ll work a lot faster if we trust each other. We both want outs, we’re both scared of being left behind. This isn’t easy for me, either. Mom said I’ve always been too trusting, and I guess that’s how I got burned last time. But seriously, you’re the only kid my age in here, and I have a feeling you’re my only way out. I’m not going to ruin that by jerking you around.” She turns emerald eyes to me. “Besides, if it’s not obvious, I really like you. You’re like this rocker jerk on the outside, but you’ve got this soft part you’ve let Emma into, which makes me think you’re pushing people away because you don’t want them to hurt you, and those are my favorite projects. You’re like a fixer-upper!”
I glare at him—er, her—and remind myself I’m supposed to play nice. “I am not a project. I push people away because I don’t like them. And I don’t need to be fixed!”
“Oh, sweetheart, shh, it’s okay. You’re really stressed right now, just watch the pretty sunset.”