Real. That other building had been too perfect, maybe even too generic. The kind of tech office that you saw people infiltrate in films. A too-perfect, constructed world. Hadn’t Chin said this man had bought a video game company?
But how had he made me feel like I was there? I wasn’t wearing any equipment. “What did you do to me?” I asked.
“I took you to the future, Steve!” Kyle obviously wasn’t the type of person who asked before using your first name. “You did pretty well.”
“We haven’t ever seen the trick with the cat sounds,” said one of the techs behind him, a woman with her hair in a ponytail. “Innovative.”
“You found the camera exploit as well,” another one said. “So far, only security professionals have done that. Everyone else tries something cliché like taping a picture of the hallway in front of the camera.”
“How did you do it, though?” I asked. “I’m not wearing a headset or anything. How did you put me into that virtual world?”
“We prefer the term ‘holodeck,’” one of the techies said.
“No we don’t,” Kyle said quickly. “Ignore them. We prefer a proprietary term that carries no legal baggage or IP infringement.” He slapped me on the shoulder, then put his arm around me.
Nearby, J.C. pointed out two men hanging back near a wall. One was the other guy from the hot dog stand, and both were packing nine-millimeters.
“I don’t like this at all,” Ivy said. “So everything we did … the incursion, dodging the cameras … it wasn’t real?”
Neither are you, I thought. Neither is most of my life.
“You’re turning VR into … prisons?” I asked Kyle.
“The natural response to current market incentives,” Kyle said, steering me along as he started walking. “Here, let me unpack it for you. Do you know how much it costs to house an inmate in the United States for a year?”
“It’s high,” I said. “Like, twenty or thirty—”
“It costs an average of thirty thousand dollars!” Kyle said. “And can get as high as sixty thousand in some states. Per year, per inmate! And what do we, the taxpayers, gain from all of that? Are the inmates at least well cared for? No! Criminal-on-criminal violence is rampant. Living conditions are terrible. Prisons are overfilled, understaffed, and underfunded. In short, we’re spending a ton for a cruddy product. How smart is that?”
“The solution seems to be to make sure fewer people go to prison.”
“A wonderful ideal, Steve! I’m glad we have people like you to deep dive into the morality of situations. But for the real world, we also need people like me—and a little practical application.”
“You still haven’t told me how you immersed me in one without my knowledge.”
Kyle led me to a window that looked in on a small room where a man lay in a bunk, peacefully asleep. Ivy and Ngozi crowded around. J.C. was playing it cool, standing back, glaring at those security guards.
“Emitters on the ceiling,” Kyle said, pointing upward. “We can engage them without the subject knowing they’re transitioning into a virtual world. That’s the key; if they think it’s real, all kinds of possibilities open up. This is the future, Steve. This changes the paradigm. It digs up the goalpost, and moves it to a completely different game.”
I looked back through the window, feeling sick.
“Right now,” Kyle said, “that man is working on an elaborate escape plan from the prison room he thinks he’s in. We’ve offered carefully calculated goals—manageable hooks he can exploit to get him closer and closer to escaping. He’s engaged, he’s excited. He thinks he’s going to do it—and in the meantime, we’re paying the equivalent of less than ten thousand a year to keep him in there.”
“Calculated goals,” I said. “Like what?”
“Our basic prison plan will offer a multitude of potential escape routes,” one of the techs said. “We’re working on a tunneling quest line, a quest line involving the befriending of guards, and a third that involves escaping using the laundry bins. Or if the prisoner prefers, they will be able to become kingpin of the prisoners—gaining dominance over the various factions, and eventually moving into a suite within the facility to live like a king.”
“What about muscle atrophy?” Ivy asked. “Bedsores? I can think of a dozen problems with this.”
I repeated the objections, and Kyle just grinned. “You’re a smart cookie, Steve,” he said. “We’re working on these issues—we have emitters that let the body move while the brain thinks it’s in the real world. Ideally, we’ll be able to use a mixture of idle and physical interaction to create a sustainable, perpetual, eco-friendly, and health-conscious incarceration solution.”
“A video game for inmates.”
“That and so much more! In our simulated routines, the prisoners have as much as a tenfold increase in satisfaction. Yes, game companies have been pioneering this technology—but nobody has been asking the most important question.”
“Which is?”
“How can we get the government to sink a ton of money into this?” Kyle grinned. He seemed to do that a lot. “Incarceration is such a nasty business to the public. They don’t want to think about it. They don’t want to interact with it. Nobody wants a prison in their back yard, but everybody wants ‘those people’ to be taken care of. Well, we can take care of them.”
Kyle rapped the window with the back of his hand. “For now, we can only simulate a simple prison facility, but we have plans. What if a prisoner could escape into the virtual world, but not know they’re in a simulation? We could watch and see if they go back to a life of crime. If they do … well, we let them live in their own world of vice, hurting nobody. But if it turns out they have rehabilitated, or might have been innocent all along, we can just let them out. It’s a perfect system.”
“It’s fake,” I whispered.
“And which would you rather live in? The fake prison where you think you’re free, or the real prison where you spend each day in drudgery? Honestly, when this project goes live, people will be begging to be let in.”
“Yet something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Ivy said, narrowing her eyes and reading Kyle. “Ask him why he needs you.”
“If it’s so great, why kidnap Sandra?”
“Kidnap? Steve, Sandy came to us. And she suggested that we approach you.”
“You could have sent me a letter.”
“We sent seven.”
I hesitated. Seven?
“Maybe we should answer our mail once in a while,” J.C. said. “You know, for old times’ sake.”
Kyle cleared his throat. “We tried working through contacts to get your attention, we tried calling, we even sent Gerry by to knock on your door.”
“You weren’t ‘taking new clients,’” the tech said. “I couldn’t get past the gate.”
It had been a while since I’d taken a case. The house staff had orders to turn away supplicants.
I stepped up close to the window, looking in at the prisoner. Lying there, eyes closed, asleep. But awake somewhere else. “Is Sandra in one of these rooms?”
“She is. But let’s not get to that yet. You asked what’s wrong with our system—and well, there are a few bugs. Turns out, human brains are very good at picking out when things are wrong. There are so many details to get right—and the processing power needed to simulate reality is enormous. We do a poor job, and the imperfections build up. Normal people last maybe a few hours in the simulation, depending on their brain chemistry.”
“The brain eventually rejects the reality,” the woman tech said. “Much as it might reject a transplanted organ.”
“The whole thing collapses,” Kyle said. “They come out of it, and we can’t get the simulation to take for them again until two or three days have passed.” He paused. “Sandy’s record in the simulation so far is eighty-seven consecutive days.”
J.C. whistled softly.
“She got kicked out again this morning,” one of the techs sa
id, “and went on a little jaunt to the fairgrounds to contact you. Wanted to do it in person. Once she spoke to you earlier, she asked to go back in. It took for her immediately. It always does.”
“Somehow,” Kyle said, “her brain can make up for the gaps in our programming. We can transmit concepts to Sandy, and she makes up the rest, adding in the details. We need to figure out how she does this, because it could be the key. If we can get the brains of our subjects to construct their own reality, we don’t need to re-create things exactly—we can just nudge them the direction we want, and let their minds do the hard work.”
“You’re the same way,” a techie noted. “We turned on the simulation the moment you climbed in through the window, and your brain blurred the real reality into our fake one, filling in details that we got wrong, or that were too low resolution. Your brain, quite frankly, is amazing.”
I rubbed my head, remembering when I’d bumped it into that shelf while climbing in the window. My vision had flashed white. Had that been the moment?
Ngozi had wandered over to the nearest of the computer stations, and was looking over the equipment—but I wasn’t sure what we’d be able to tell without Chin here. Hell, this might be out of even his league. Wirelessly projecting global hallucinations directly into the brain? That was some Arnaud “theoretical physics” levels of science.
I looked to the side, to get Tobias’s read on the situation. But there was no Tobias. Not anymore.
“So they need our brain,” Ivy said. “You can make your own reality, Steve, and they want to know how.”
“But they already have Sandra,” I said. “Why do they need me?”
“Try understanding a disease with only one patient,” Kyle said. “Or doing a drug test with only one subject. You’re an incredibly rare find, Steve. Your mind is worth millions. All we want is for you to spend some time in the simulation. A few years at most.”
A few years?
“No chance,” I said. “I’m already wealthy. What could you possibly offer me to live in your box?”
“Sandra is free of her aspects,” Kyle said.
Ivy looked at me sharply.
Kyle smiled. “You’re interested, I see. Yes, she asked if we could stop the hallucinations. Construct a reality where she was free of them.” He hesitated, and I caught what I thought was a sign of discomfort from him. “It … didn’t work like we thought it would.”
“When we put her into the simulation,” a techie said, “she added to the programming, making her aspects appear. And they interacted with the world we created—Sandra layered another reality on top of our virtual reality, and adapted the code. But she wanted the aspects gone … and turns out, we could help with that.”
I shivered. Something about the tone in his voice.
“Anyway,” Kyle said, “Sandy’s been very helpful. She’s showing us how the brain alters its own reality. We aren’t really sure exactly why or how our programs interact with her aspects, but they do—we’re getting all kinds of interesting interactions between our tech and her brain. One thing is certain. We can help you be free of them, like she is. No more aspects—no more nightmares. No more voices.”
Ivy looked aghast. J.C., though, met my eyes and nodded. He’d never wanted to be an aspect. He could understand how part of me just wanted things to be … normal.
“Let me talk to Sandra,” I said.
Kyle winced. “Now, see, here’s the problem. She’s my only chip in this particular bet. Surely you see I can’t give her up without something in return? Look, let’s do a quick deal. Handshake. Give me a few days of data, and let me prove to you that I can create a reality where you don’t have aspects. In turn, I’ll let you talk to Sandra.”
“He’s a snake, Steve,” Ivy said. “I can’t believe you’re even considering this. Why are we listening?”
I closed my eyes. But it was strangely tempting. Last time I’d tried to get away, Joyce had come complaining that I never took her on missions, Armando had phoned me seventeen times, and I’d found Ivans in the closet drinking the bottle of hotel wine. On top of it all, J.C. had shown up “just in case.”
My life was so stuffed full of fake people, I didn’t have room for anything or anyone else. But that look in Ivy’s eyes. And this offer … it would only give me another layer of fakeness. I wouldn’t be normal, because none of it would be real.
“No deal,” I said, turning to walk away. My three aspects joined me as I strode toward the front door of the large, hollow room.
“Very well,” Kyle said with a sigh. “Gerry, try the isolation program on him.”
I spun. “You can’t—”
“Steve, you broke into my offices. You’re the trespasser. I’m perfectly justified in holding you a little while, to be certain you aren’t dangerous. Until the authorities arrive.” He smiled. “Next time, maybe don’t screw with the guy who literally owns the prison.”
I lunged for him, but the room flashed white.
I stumbled over a rock and hit the ground. A sandy beach, with waves softly lapping to my right, a jungle to my left. My aspects stumbled around, J.C. with hand on gun, Ngozi gasping—horrified—to be suddenly outdoors someplace so wild.
A deserted island.
TWELVE
“That rat!” J.C. shouted. “That slimeball. He’s getting free time studying us!”
Ivy helped me to my feet, but I had difficulty meeting her eyes. I sat down on a rock by the water, feeling exhausted. I was so tired. Tired of being a test subject. Tired of imagining a world where everyone lived—had friends, fell in love, visited family—except me.
Tired of being the middle manager of my own existence.
“I can’t believe this!” J.C. shouted. “I can’t … Yo, Ngozi. You okay?”
She shook her head. “No. This is horrible. Where are my gloves?” She fished in her pockets.
“Yeah,” J.C. said, “but—like—there’s no people, right? So no germs.”
“Except for the fact that we’re not really on a beach!” she said. “We’re in that smelly warehouse, next to a table full of six old Chinese delivery containers. I’m going to end up touching one by accident.”
“So what do we do?” Ivy looked toward J.C.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “All I know how to do is shoot people and make clever wisecracks.”
“Oh please,” Ivy said. “Your wisecracks are not clever.”
I put my head in my hands, looking at a wave roll in, feeling a pounding headache come on.
“I think Steve is going to be indisposed for a little while,” Ivy said. “We might need to solve this ourselves. Ngozi, ideas?”
“Well, there are footprints in the sand over there,” she said. “Might be one of those ‘quest lines’ the tech people were talking about.”
I watched the wave roll in, deposit some sand, then die off. It would all just get sucked out again when the tide changed. Then return. A thousand little versions of Sisyphus, repeating until the sand wore away to nothing.
“Steve,” Ivy said, stepping up. “We’re going to follow those footprints. We’ll be back in a minute. You’ll be okay?”
I didn’t reply.
“Just stay here, all right?”
They walked off. A part of me noticed that they were acting a little strange. They almost never left me. But now they went off exploring?
Maybe, I thought, maybe they’re excited to be able to actually interact with a world. In here, everything is fake. So maybe it’s better for them.
Or … was Kyle going to do something to them? To prove he could leave me here alone? How long would he hold me here? How long could he?
A strong hand gripped me on the shoulder. I jumped, turning, and found Lua standing behind me. Lua! He’d vanished from the mansion, becoming a nightmare.
I screamed and scrambled off the rock, pulling out of his grip and dropping into the rolling surf. I splashed, climbing to my feet, soaked wet and holding out my phone—for some reaso
n I would never have been able to articulate—as if it were a weapon. Only then did I realize something was wrong. Lua didn’t look like a nightmare—he didn’t have the dead eyes or the sunken face. He looked just like his normal self.
“Sorry, boss. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” The large Samoan man folded his arms. He was wearing jeans and flannel, with the sleeves rolled up. He inspected the sky, then the woods, then the rock I’d been sitting on. “A deserted island. Of all the places for you to end up.”
“It’s … it’s not real.”
“What is?” he asked, then chuckled. He never laughed loudly, but I’d also never known him to be angry. In fact, it was hard for me to imagine him as a nightmare, like Armando had become.
“They got all the clichés at least,” Lua said. “That bay is right out of a freaking Disney movie, complete with—yes—the mast of a sunken ship. Tribal drums in the background. Mysterious footprints. What you want to bet that if we start digging, we’ll find a treasure chest somewhere on this beach?” He started toward the woods. “Well, let’s get you out of here.”
“Out?” I asked, scrambling across the beach behind him. “How?”
“They implied earlier they couldn’t re-create more than a small space,” he said. “A building at most. So I figure, if we get you out into the water—away from the actual island—the thing will fall apart.” He started pulling at some vines dangling from a tree.
“Lua?” I said. “How do you know what they said to me earlier? You weren’t there.”
“I know what you know, boss. And you know what I know.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I said. “Because that’s the way I stay sane. That’s the way Sandra set it up.”
Lua grunted. “How did that work out for her?” He knelt down, twisting the vines to strengthen them, then wrapping them around the edge of a small fallen log.
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