by Dima Zales
In a final spurt of defiance, I manage to say, “If you kill us, Nero will make a Shrek kebob out of you.”
Technically, Shrek is an ogre, not an orc, and I have no idea if Nero would be upset by my demise at all, but it’s a pleasant fantasy.
“Count, or I will shoot,” the orc growls.
“One,” I say, my voice shaking.
Chapter Nineteen
“Two,” I continue, wondering why I’m still alive. “Three.”
As I count, I fume inside. Why didn’t a vision forewarn me of this? What use is my power if it doesn’t work when I need it?
I wish I’d somehow gotten in touch with Darian and made him teach me how to properly control my power; that way, no orc would’ve been able to sneak up on me.
“Fifty,” I say and allow myself to hope that I might actually survive this.
When I get to the count of one hundred, I become increasingly certain he won’t shoot me—because why wait so long before doing so?
Then again, why pretend to be a robber in the first place?
When I’m on 457, the train stops and the doors open.
I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but I think I hear heavy footsteps echo in the distance.
For good measure, I continue counting and keep my eyes closed, not willing to give the orc an excuse to shoot me if he’s still standing there, aiming at my head.
The doors close when I’m on the count of 498, so I eagerly keep counting up.
“A thousand,” I announce triumphantly when I finish the count and gingerly peep through my eyelashes.
Aside from Maya, there’s no one in the train car anymore.
I open my eyes fully, letting them readjust to the brightness of the car.
“He’s gone,” Maya whispers, opening her eyes as well. “I thought we were going to die for sure.”
She looks paler than the vampires at Earth Club. I want to reach out and give her a hug, but the shoulder the orc grabbed is throbbing in pain.
“I think that was the idea.” I touch the shoulder in question and wince. “I think he wanted to scare us as much as to take our money.”
She swallows thickly. “He was so huge.”
I debate telling her he’s that size because he’s an orc but decide against it. Whatever these orcs want seems so bizarrely illogical I worry that telling her about them might pull her into whatever strangeness they’re up to.
“Do you have any painkillers?” I ask as calmly as I can.
“I have a Celebrex.” Some color returns to her cheeks as she adds, “My period pain is so bad my pediatrician had to give me a prescription.”
“I’m jealous you’re young enough to still see a pediatrician,” I say, determined to put her at ease. “I loved mine.”
“I’m turning eighteen in a few months,” she says, her lips pursing almost petulantly. “Until you came along, I was probably the oldest at Orientation.”
“How did that happen?” I ask, deciding it would not be a compliment if I told her she looks not a day over fourteen.
“Only my mom is a Cognizant.” She looks at the gum stuck on the floor. “I told her about my powers just a few months ago; before that, I thought I might be crazy. And Mom couldn’t tell me on her own because of the Mandate.”
“Oh, wow.” That’s worse than what I went through while discovering my powers. At least I only briefly thought I might be crazy.
“Yeah.” Maya gives me a grim smile. “Having powers is so rare in my situation that no one bothered to check if I was one of the lucky exceptions. But since I’ve gotten under the Mandate, Mom has been telling me all kinds of cool things. We’ve become much closer as a result.”
She stops, giving me a guilty look. “I’m sorry. It must be hard for you to hear about this when you don’t know who your biological mom is.”
“It’s totally fine,” I reassure her. “Let me look up your pills because my shoulder is throbbing worse and worse.”
I take out my phone with my uninjured hand and bless the cell tower gods who have seen fit to give me a signal. Using voice commands, I search the web about her medication.
“I’ll take one of your pills,” I say after I skim a few articles. “It’s an NSAID, like Aspirin.”
Maya gives me a pill, and I dry swallow it before telling her, “You might want to double-check this prescription with an OB-GYN at some point in the near future.” According to one of the articles, this medication gives some people heart trouble.
She reddens again, and to change the subject, I use my uninjured arm to get out a deck of cards.
“Do you want to see something cool?” I ask, and she nods vigorously.
For the rest of the ride, I perform every card effect I can think of that can be done with one arm. Turns out, I can do a ton of them, thanks in large part to a DVD by the late René Lavand—an amazing magician who lost his arm when he was nine and still became a world-renowned performer.
Maya is entertained with everything I show her and seems to forget our recent misadventures—which was my goal.
“This is our stop,” I say, grudgingly putting away the cards as the doors open.
We rush out of the train, and I realize my shoulder feels better.
The pill does work. That, or my injury wasn’t that bad to begin with.
“You don’t have to stop by,” I say when we get to the street. “You’ve had enough adventures for the day.”
“No, I want to,” Maya says. “I’ve never seen a chinchilla before, and I owe you for saving my life. Twice.”
I think the truth is that she was in danger because of me that second time, but I don’t argue.
As we walk and talk, I sneak bullets from my pocket and reload the gun inside my bag.
If some orc walks a dog again—or does anything else near me—I’m busting a cap in his or her green ass.
Of course, now that I’m armed, Murphy’s/Chester’s Law makes sure we get to my apartment unmolested.
I open the door and lead her in. “This is our place.”
Maya looks around with unabashed jealousy.
“Honey, I’m home,” I yell out.
Ariel, Fluffster, and Felix come out to greet us at the same time.
“Maya,” I say. “Meet everyone.”
“Hi, Maya,” Fluffster says mentally—I assume in her head as well as ours.
“Hello.” Maya sinks to her haunches and rewards the chinchilla with a girlish smile. “Is it okay if I say you’re cute?”
“Why not?” Fluffster’s mental voice is completely serious. “Sasha spent over two hundred dollars to buy this animal’s body. It’s bound to be appealing.”
“Hello,” Ariel says and uses Maya’s momentary distraction to give me a “what the hell?” look.
“Maya’s power is psychometry,” I explain. “She offered to use it on Fluffster, to try to determine his origins.”
“Oh wow,” Felix says, looking down at Maya. “That’s a very impressive power you’ve got.”
Maya unpeels her eyes from Fluffster and stares at Felix, her gaze traveling from his fuzzy slippers to his stretched-knee sweatpants to the ratty “there is no spoon” t-shirt covered with the signature Matrix code. To my dismay, her eyes stop on my roommate’s face long enough for me to mentally spell “jailbait.”
To his credit, Felix seems completely oblivious to her ogling. “Can you do it now?” he asks eagerly. “I’m sure Fluffster wouldn’t mind.”
“I want to know my origins very much,” Fluffster says in everyone’s head. “Young lady.” He looks at Maya. “I want you to touch me.”
Ariel, Felix, and I burst out laughing while Maya and the chinchilla look at us like we’re completely insane.
“We should keep him away from playgrounds,” Ariel says between guffaws, and this renews our merriment for another few seconds.
Rolling her eyes at us, Maya reaches for Fluffster and gently cradles his body in her hands.
A glowing, purple-tinted energy se
eps from her skin into Fluffster’s fur, and Maya’s expression turns distant, like she’s in a trance.
“I see him washing, but in dust instead of water,” she chants under her breath. “He’s guarding your dwelling. He’s eating hay. And peanuts. And raisins.” Her eyes roll behind her head for a moment; then she exhales, and her eyes go back to normal as she puts Fluffster back on the ground.
Looking at me with undisguised disappointment, she says, “All I got is that he belongs to you. If he can be said to belong to anyone, that is.”
“That’s still something,” Felix says reassuringly. “At least we know for certain he wasn’t somehow from my family.”
“He’s right,” Ariel says. “We can now be sure you have a Russian connection.”
“That’s true,” I say, pretending to an enthusiasm I don’t feel. I was hoping Maya could spare me from having to visit with the mysterious Baba Yaga, but no such luck.
“So,” Felix says, always eager to break an uncomfortable silence. “What did you kids learn at Orientation today?”
Maya looks like he slapped her with the word “kid.”
I give Felix a narrow-eyed stare. “We covered how being a Cognizant is stored in our DNA.”
“Ah.” He grins. “Hekima’s theories remind me of that Sidney Harris cartoon with the two scientists standing by the blackboard, with a bunch of math formulas on both sides and the words ‘then a miracle occurs’ in the middle.”
He looks at everyone, but it seems like I’m the only one who gets the reference. Deciding to mess with him, I try to look as blank as the others.
“Anyway,” he says with a lot less enthusiasm. “The punchline is ‘I think you should be more explicit here in step two.’”
Maya emits the most fake chuckle I’ve ever heard, and Ariel hides her face long enough to roll her eyes at me.
I look at Fluffster and everyone else’s auras. “At least he’s trying to explain all this. I don’t see you theorizing how the Cognizant powers work, and the Otherlands and everything.”
Ariel makes a throat-slicing gesture with her palm—mime language for “stop talking about that at once.”
Felix perks up. “I do actually have a theory that explains everything. I can’t believe I didn’t tell you about it yet.”
“I have to use the restroom,” Ariel says and gives me a look that seems to say, “I tried to warn you. Now it’s your funeral.”
Felix ignores her departure, walks over to the living room couch, and takes a seat. “Have you ever heard of the simulation theory?” he asks.
I gesture for Maya to sit on the couch, and she plops right next to Felix, so I sit to her right. “I hear about this theory every time you get drunk or high.”
I look at Fluffster for support, but the chinchilla simply jumps onto my lap and gestures with his head for me to pet him—so I do. “You go on about how reality is simulated on some powerful computer outside our universe,” I tell Felix. “How even everyone’s brains are simulated.”
“I guess I have talked to you about that,” he says disappointedly. Then he looks at Maya, oblivious to the fact that their knees are touching. “Just so that you’re in the loop, Maya, let me better explain what Sasha just alluded to. But first, do you play video games?”
“I have the Switch,” Maya says, her cheeks turning pink, as though she’s just admitted to being a pervert or a telemarketer.
“I have one of those too,” Felix says, the excitement in his voice jumping up an octave.
“You have all the gaming systems ever invented,” I say, curious how this revelation will affect the dreamy look on Maya’s face. To my surprise, she stares at Felix with even more admiration.
Ignoring me, he says to her, “Consider the difference between something like Pac Man—an older game that involves a yellow circle running around eating shapeless pellets—and the latest Zelda game, which is like a fully fleshed-out micro world that one can get lost in.”
Maya sagely nods, her eyes never leaving Felix’s face.
“And now also consider virtual reality.” He conversationally touches Maya’s hand, and she looks like she might have either an orgasm or an aneurysm. “Have you ever tried virtual reality on your phone or on one of those VR gizmos?” he asks her.
She shakes her head, then licks her lips and huskily says, “No. I haven’t. But I’d love to.”
“I have,” I chime in, worried Maya might forget that I’m here and jump Felix—making me an accessory to a crime. “Aside from motion-sickness-like nausea, it was really cool. It felt like being transported to another world.”
“Exactly,” Felix exclaims. “Given the evolution of the game industry, doesn’t it seem logical to you that games will eventually be indistinguishable from reality?”
“Maybe,” I say. “At some point.”
“Like in The Matrix?” Maya asks, her hand hovering perilously close to Felix’s knee.
“You’ve seen The Matrix?” For the first time, Felix looks at the girl with something resembling awareness of her as a real person and not just a pair of ears for him to geek out to. “What I’m talking about is indeed like The Matrix,” he continues without waiting for her reply, “but on a multiverse scale and with people who are fully simulated, like the agents in The Matrix. No plugging in. No bodies.”
I want to say something about Maya being born after The Matrix came out, but seeing the admiration in the poor girl’s eyes, I suppress the urge. Maya’s puppy crush doesn’t give me the uncomfortable sensation I felt when I learned about Felix’s date.
Speaking of the mystery girl, I wonder when their date is happening. Because if she shows up in the next few minutes, Maya will be crushed.
“Wow.” Maya’s enthusiasm seems genuine. “You think our world is like that?”
“It’s only logical.” Felix turns completely toward her, cutting me out of the conversation. “If all the kids in some universe outside of ours have video game systems that can simulate whole realities, and if there are millions or quadrillions of these simulated worlds, but only a few real ones, then, statistically speaking, we’re more likely to find ourselves in one of the simulated ones.”
“All this is great,” I say, rubbing Fluffster under his chin. “But what proof is there for this theory?”
“The universe seems suspiciously mathematical,” Felix says, turning back to face me. “Almost as though some computer scientist designed it, perhaps?” His unibrow goes up. “And, to get back to what started this discussion in the first place, simulation theory is the only rational way to explain us—the Cognizant.”
“Is it?” I ask, intrigued despite myself.
“Think about it.” He turns to Maya, then back to me, then back to Maya. “How else do you explain both of your powers? Predicting the future in the real world would probably be impossible, but if the world is like a video game, then you can use computer resources outside the game to forecast what might happen inside the game next. Psychometry is also easy to explain. In a computer world, everything has metadata—information that describes who something belongs to, and things like that.”
Maya looks like her mind is blown, but I’m a lot more skeptical.
“How would this explain all the rules, such as the one about ‘If you move to Gomorrah, you’ll lose your powers over time?’” I ask, stroking Fluffster between his ears. “Or that domovoi need an animal’s body to become corporeal?”
“It’s interesting you bring up Gomorrah,” he says, looking back at me. “On that world, they have VR tech that makes ours seem like child’s play. But, to get back to my point, video games are all about rules.” He looks at Maya. “Why does Mario—who’s supposed to be a plumber—use a jump as his modus operandi? Why not club gumbas with a wrench? Something like the rule about the domovoi makes more sense than that Mario game, as it might be based on some myth in the world where the console was created.”
I scratch my head. “I’m not sure—”
“The Cognizant
might be playable characters,” he says passionately. “A way to have fun with superpowers, or be a vampire, or an orc, or you name it. Earth and places like it might be PVP zones, while Gomorrah is a non-PVP zone.”
“What’s PVP?” I ask, seeing a blank look on Maya’s face.
“Player versus player,” he says. “Zones where combat is possible.”
I shake my head. “What about the whole thing about human belief giving us more powers? How does that fit in?”
Ariel walks back into the room; her hair looks neater, and her makeup is reapplied.
“That’s probably an implementation detail,” Felix says. “The in-game universe might be a type of consensus reality—a good way to save resources—”
“You’re still talking about this?” Ariel says in maybe-mock horror. “How about offering our guest some coffee?”
“I’m sorry.” Felix gives Maya a sheepish look. “Do you want some tea?”
“I do,” Maya says, with the intonation girls use to agree to a marriage proposal. “But unfortunately, I have to run home.”
“Oh.” It’s unclear if Felix is upset that Maya has to go or (more likely) that he has to stop talking about his theories.
“You should come back and see my psychometry routine,” I tell Maya, suppressing my own disappointment about not showing it today. “Come on a day when you can stay for a meal. Felix is an amazing cook.”
Maya audibly swallows and very quickly says, “Yes. I’d love that. Thank you.”
“No problem,” I say, feeling a wave of mischievousness coming on. I turn to Felix. “Can you please walk Maya home? I’d do it myself, but I have to go to work.”
Felix raises his unibrow higher than usual and looks at Maya as though he’s just noticing she’s there.
“It’s not necessary,” Maya says, so halfheartedly that I have to suppress a laugh. “I live just a few blocks away.”
“No,” Felix says, and it’s clear that he’s channeling the gentlemanly chauvinism he picked up from his father—just as I suspected he would. “Let me walk you. I insist.”
“Okay.” Maya demurely bats her eyelashes. “Thank you.”